Effectiveness of spiritual care training to enhance spiritual health and spiritual care competency among oncology nurses

Abstract

Background: Although spiritual care is a basic element of holistic nursing, nurses' spiritual care knowledge and abilities are often unable to satisfy patients' spiritual care needs. Therefore, nurses are in urgent need of relevant training to enhance their abilities to provide patients with spiritual care. Design: A non-randomized controlled trial. Objective : To establish a spiritual care training protocol and verify its effectiveness. Methods: This study recruited 92 nurses at a cancer-treatment hospital in a certain province via voluntary sign-up. The nurses were divided into two groups: the experimental group (45 people) and the control (wait-listed) group (47 people) using a coin-toss method. The experimental group received one spiritual care group training session each six months based on their routine nursing education; this training chiefly consisted of lectures by experts, group interventions, clinical practice, and case sharing. The control group participated in monthly nursing education sessions organized by the hospital for 12 continuous months. Results : After 12 months of intervention, the nurses in the experimental group had significantly higher overall spiritual health and spiritual care competency scores as well as significantly higher scores on all individual dimensions compared with those in the control group ( P <0.01). Conclusions: A spiritual care training protocol for nurses based on the concept of mutual growth with patients enhances nurses' spiritual well-being, spiritual care competencies.Trial registration: ChiCTR1900020930. Registered 22 January 2019.

Empowerment of nurses for integrating clients’ religion/spirituality into clinical practice: outcomes of an online training program

“…The findings indicated that the training program increased self-perceived competency of the intervention group in integrating clients’ R/S in clinical practice significantly and with a very large effect size. Similar to the present study, several studies reported positive effects of the training programs on spiritual care competencies and integration of clients’ R/S into clinical practice in healthcare providers, including nurses and nursing students [ 22 , 23 , 31 – 33 ]. Pearce et al (2019) conducted an interventional online study that increased spiritual competencies and integration of clients’ R/S into practice among mental healthcare providers.…”

Educational interventions and strategies for spiritual care in nursing and healthcare students and staff: A scoping review

“…What is seen in studies that include evaluations by patients, is that they benefit from a change in practice after staff have attended courses. Hu et al (2019, S3) claim that nurses with spiritual health have a better ability to recognise and respond to patients’ spiritual needs and are more likely to proactively provide spiritual care to patients. Other studies indicate that training in spiritual care for healthcare professionals may have positive effects on the quality of care as reported by patients (van de Geer et al, 2017, S14; Vlasblom et al, 2011, S35).…”

Student nurses' spiritual care competence and attitude: An online survey

“…Students who had attended spiritual care courses could acquire more spiritual care knowledge and had a deeper understanding of spiritual care, making them more willing to apply spiritual care into their practice. Studies also suggested that additional nursing spiritual education could improve spiritual care awareness, knowledge, and skills (Green et al, 2020; Hu et al, 2019; Rachel et al, 2019). Similarly, studies found that not including spiritual care courses in nursing programs is a barrier to providing spiritual care (Musa et al, 2019; Ross et al, 2018).…”