What the Spirit Receives, the Body Achieves: Spiritual Care of BSU Student Nurses

摘要

Spiritual care is a natural part of total care which fits easily into the nursing process of assessment, nursing diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. Placing spiritual need and spiritual care within the framework of the nursing process and has proven to be very helpful, for both philosophical and practical reasons. The aim of the study was to explore and describe student nurses’ conceptualization and their experiences of rendering spiritual nursing care. Unstructured in-depth individual interviews and focus group interviews were the main methods of gathering. Following Colaizzi’s data analysis method, the following themes were identified: the meaning of spiritual care, the nurse relationships in health care context, the provision of spiritual care and the challenges in the provision of spiritual nursing care which were also utilized as the themes. Providing basic spiritual nursing care to patients does not need an agreement or consent, but may be necessary if offering spiritual nursing care which touches areas of belief systems, religious worldviews or doctrinal practices. Prayer and use of spiritual songs were the most common and simplest form of spiritual nursing care rendered by student nurses. However, spiritual nursing care is not only about prayer, reading scriptures or use of sacred music, but other modes of care such as providing patients with information or appropriate referral are examples of such care, touch and humor. The constraints that were identified are lack of time, and guidance or not given with the spiritual principles during their related learning experiences and lectures. Spiritual nursing care, according to this study, was provided based on the spiritual background of the student nurses, and not necessarily as part of professional preparation of the nurse. The findings suggest that the outcome of the participants’ spiritual intervention had a positive therapeutic effect on their patients.