IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jocnur/v21y2012i15-16p2126-2135.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Spirituality and spiritual caring: nurses’ perspectives and practice in palliative and acute care environments

Author

Listed:
  • Susan Ronaldson
  • Lillian Hayes
  • Christina Aggar
  • Jennifer Green
  • Michele Carey

Abstract

Aims and objectives. Identify and compare spiritual caring practice by palliative care and acute care registered nurses (RNs), determine any correlation between nurses’ spiritual perspective and their spiritual caring, and to investigate perceived barriers to spiritual caring. Background. Over the past decade there has been growing interest in spiritual caring in nursing. Professional nursing bodies have proposed spirituality and spiritual caring as an integral component of holistic nursing. Design. Cross sectional study. Methods. Palliative care RNs (n = 42) from one community palliative care service and three hospices, and acute care RNs (n = 50) from three major acute care hospitals all in metropolitan Sydney, Australia completed a research questionnaire. Two validated tools and a demographic survey were used to collect data. These tools measured spiritual perspectives including saliency of personal spirituality, spiritual views and engagement in spiritually‐related activities; and spiritual practice including assessment, interventions and barriers to spiritual caring. Data were collected over a six‐month period and interpreted with both descriptive and analytical statistics. Results. Significant differences were seen between the two RN groups. Palliative care RNs’ spiritual caring practice was more advanced and their spiritual perspective stronger; this relationship was positive. Both RN groups identified ‘insufficient time’ as the most common barrier to spiritual caring practice; ‘patient privacy’ was also common for acute care RNs. Conclusions. Palliative care RNs’ spiritual perspectives influenced their spiritual caring. These nurses were older and more career‐advanced than the acute care RNs, which may explain the differences observed. Acute care RNs may benefit from additional support for their spiritual caring and to address perceived barriers. Relevance to clinical practice. The development of nurses’ spiritual perspective early in their preparation for practice, and the articulation and documentation of spiritual caring may enhance their spiritual caring practice. Further research on barriers to spiritual caring in acute care nursing environments is recommended.

Suggested Citation

  • Susan Ronaldson & Lillian Hayes & Christina Aggar & Jennifer Green & Michele Carey, 2012. "Spirituality and spiritual caring: nurses’ perspectives and practice in palliative and acute care environments," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(15‐16), pages 2126-2135, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:21:y:2012:i:15-16:p:2126-2135
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2702.2012.04180.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2012.04180.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2012.04180.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlos Laranjeira & Maria Anjos Dixe & Ana Querido, 2023. "Perceived Barriers to Providing Spiritual Care in Palliative Care among Professionals: A Portuguese Cross-Sectional Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(12), pages 1-13, June.
    2. Suh‐Ing Hsieh & Li‐Ling Hsu & Chen‐Yi Kao & Sara Breckenridge‐Sproat & Hui‐Ling Lin & Hsiu‐Chen Tai & Tzu‐Hsin Huang & Tsung‐Lan Chu, 2020. "Factors associated with spiritual care competencies in Taiwan’s clinical nurses: A descriptive correlational study," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(9-10), pages 1599-1613, May.
    3. Andrew Ormsby & Ann Harrington & Sally Borbasi, 2017. "‘You never come back the same’: the challenge of spiritual care in a deployed military nursing context," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(9-10), pages 1351-1362, May.
    4. Elizabeth Batstone & Cara Bailey & Nutmeg Hallett, 2020. "Spiritual care provision to end‐of‐life patients: A systematic literature review," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(19-20), pages 3609-3624, October.
    5. Elizabeth Johnston Taylor & Carla Gober-Park & Kathy Schoonover-Shoffner & Iris Mamier & Chintan K. Somaiya & Khaled Bahjri, 2019. "Nurse Religiosity and Spiritual Care: An Online Survey," Clinical Nursing Research, , vol. 28(5), pages 636-652, June.
    6. Robyn Keall & Josephine M Clayton & Phyllis Butow, 2014. "How do Australian palliative care nurses address existential and spiritual concerns? Facilitators, barriers and strategies," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(21-22), pages 3197-3205, November.
    7. Li‐Fen Wu & Malcolm Koo & Hui‐Chen Tseng & Yu‐Chen Liao & Yuh‐Min Chen, 2015. "Concordance between nurses' perception of their ability to provide spiritual care and the identified spiritual needs of hospitalized patients: A cross‐sectional observational study," Nursing & Health Sciences, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(4), pages 426-433, December.
    8. Donna D Kincheloe & Lois M Stallings Welden & Ann White, 2018. "A Spiritual Care Toolkit: An evidence‐based solution to meet spiritual needs," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(7-8), pages 1612-1620, April.
    9. Erna Rochmawati & Rick Wiechula & Kate Cameron, 2018. "Centrality of spirituality/religion in the culture of palliative care service in Indonesia: An ethnographic study," Nursing & Health Sciences, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(2), pages 231-237, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:21:y:2012:i:15-16:p:2126-2135. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2702 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.