Spirituality in Nursing: Filipino Elderly's Concept of, Distance from, and Involvement with God

摘要

Spirituality is an aspect of holistic care delivery by health team members. However, despite the established relationship of spirituality and health, there had been little evidence of ways of assessing spirituality for nurses' clinical practice in Asia, particularly in regard to geriatric patients. This study aimed to establish an eiditic description of a selected group of Filipino elderly's concept of, distance from, and involvement with God. The goal was to strengthen the need for a holistic care delivery framework anchored on the recognition of spiritual well-being among geriatric patients. Seven Filipino geriatrics suffering from chronic illness participated voluntarily as respondents for this qualitative study. A three-part researcher-made instrument was used in eliciting the needed data and information. The first part of data gathering made use of a robotfoto to establish the demographic profile of the respondents. Doodling was utilized to ascertain the respondents' concept of God. Distance from God was assessed through a picture prompt presenting a seat plan in a theatre. A semistructured interview was employed to probe deeper into the respondents' involvement with God. Field texts were phenomenologically reduced via repertory grid and dendogram. The study has eiditically and interestingly surfaced the Filipino elderly's twin concept of God as creating and creative. Generally, the respondents' preferred a close distance from God to facilitate better understanding and higher concentration with God's words. Involvement with God portrayed a sequential process of connection coined as the Ladder to G-O-D, referring to the course of Getting involved, Outcome identification, and Deeper connection.