Nurses’ Attitudes Towards Spiritual Care and Spiritual Care Practices

Abstract

Background: Spirituality is an important dimension of human existence with a crucial role in health promotion. This study aimed to investigate nurses' attitudes towards spiritual care and its practice. Methods:It was a descriptive cross-sectional study. The relevant data were collected by Nursing Spiritual Care Perspective Scale (NSCPS). In this study, 166 nurses working in hospitals affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences were selected by proportional stratified randomized sampling method. The obtained data were analysed by descriptive statistics, including frequency, mean, and standard deviation, using SPSS V. 16. Results:The Mean±SD score of nurses' attitudes towards spiritual practice was 3.67±0.51. The mean score of responses to 9 out of 11 items was above 3 indicating high range of attitude toward providing spiritual care. The Mean±SD score of nurses' spiritual practice was 1.93±0.48. The mean score of the responses to 3 out of 12 items was above 2 indicating the nurses' weak ability to provide spiritual care. Conclusion:Despite nurses' positive attitudes towards providing spiritual care, they have provided insufficient spiritual care interventions. Thus, appropriate approach for teaching spiritual merits and increasing nurses' abilities for providing spiritual care seems necessary.

The Elders’ Spiritual Well-Being and Their Quality of Life: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Body, mind, and spirit are associated with each other; accordingly providing spiritual care is an essential part of holistic nursing care. In other words, health care providers should consider physical, psychological, sociocultural, and spiritual dimensions of health in their caring services (Farahaninia et al 2018). Based on the results of the present study, spirituality and teaching the ways of Spiritual Well-Being promotion should be considered by those involved in providing care to elders.…”

A structural equation modeling analysis of the effects of nurses' spirituality and spiritual care on professional quality of life

“…In the study, it is seen that the scores of nurses regarding SSCR perceptions are above the average in parallel with the literature (Herlianita et al, 2018; Karadag Arli et al, 2017; Yildirim & Ertem, 2022). This shows that nurses' attitudes toward spiritual care are positive, and they perceive it as an important part of care (Farahaninia et al, 2018; Rhyu et al, 2023). However, in previous studies, although their attitudes toward spiritual care were positive, it was stated that nurses had difficulties in meeting the spiritual needs of individuals because they did not have sufficient knowledge and skills in applying spiritual care, and they could not find time to provide spiritual care due to workload, working conditions, and nurse insufficiency (Herlianita et al, 2018; Rachel et al, 2019).…”