Thai Nurses' Experiences of Spiritual Care for Older Adults at End of Life

Abstract

Most Thai registered nurses who provide end-of-life care emphasize the physical dimension of care rather than spiritual care. There is a need to explore the experiences of Thai nurses who provide spiritual care. The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of Thai palliative care nurses providing spiritual care for older adults at the end of life. A descriptive qualitative research design was used. The 8 participants were Thai nurses with experience of palliative care in hospitals in the central, northeastern, northern, and southern regions of Thailand. A focus group discussion was used for data collection. Content analysis was used to analyze data. Five themes were as follows: (1) spiritual care was searching for meaning in patients' lives, (2) spiritual self-preparation of nurses for making sense and connecting to patients' spirituality, (3) caring for patients' spiritual needs by recognizing psychological and religious beliefs, (4) facilitating ways to ease patients' suffering, and (5) assuring confidence of patients and relatives for receiving the best care. These findings that should be included in training registered nurses are honoring the patients' lives, addressing spiritual needs to decrease patients' suffering, and enhancing patients' perceptions of care through spiritual self-preparation and spiritual concern of nurses.

Health and Spirituality: Relevance and Challenges of Research

“…36 According to recent studies, knowing the nuances of spirituality, as well as its approaches and concepts, is fundamental for health professionals to improve and deliver services that are more focused on patients individual needs. 7,9,[10][11][12][14][15][16][17][39][40][41] In this context, this article presents a general objective to identify the main characteristics of scientific research inherent to the theme spirituality in health, thus answering the following questions: Who are the main authors of the theme? What are the main areas of health research on the subject?…”