Facing Existential Realities: Exploring Barriers and Challenges to Spiritual Nursing Care

Abstract

Although nurses of the past and present recognize the importance of spiritual care to health and healing, in practice and education, spiritual care dwells on the periphery of the profession. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the reasons behind this contradiction. Using the phenomenological approach, open-ended interviews were conducted with 29 individuals, including oncology nurses, patients and their families, chaplains, and hospital administrators. Their accounts reveal examples of how attitudes, beliefs, and practices of the larger organizational culture can shape the everyday lived experience of bedside nursing. Specifically, these influences tend to create a lived space that is uncaring, and a lived time that is "too tight." Moreover, lived body is experienced as an object for technical intervention, and lived other is experienced from a distance rather than "up close and personal." It was argued that, together, these existential experiences of lived time, space, body, and other create formidable barriers to spiritual nursing care.

A Quasi-Experimental Pilot Study Examining the Effects of Spiritual Nursing Care Education Based in Biblical Truth on Pediatric Nurses' Competence in Providing Spiritual Nursing Care

“…This group of nurses already had a high respect for the spirituality of their patients before the education session. This supports the literature that stated nurses respect spirituality but are unsure of how to provide spiritual nursing care (Ross, 2006, McEwen, 2004, Carr, 2010.…”

“…A major barrier to nurses providing spiritual care is nurses do not see themselves as spiritual caregivers (Ross, 2006& McEwen, 2004. Furthermore, Carr (2010) reported that nurses perceive that the rise of professionalism has labeled some spiritual care practices as crossing professional boundaries, and workplace stressors and decreased time to provide holistic care creates moral distress. These factors along with the fear of their own mortality prevent nurses from providing spiritual care (Carr, 2010).…”

“…The biomedical model dominates healthcare and this leads to nurses looking at the body in parts that need to be fixed or maintained (Carr, 2010). The wholistic nursing care that includes spiritual care is not possible when viewing healthcare in this manner.…”

Diagnósticos de enfermagem em clínica cirúrgica

“…In professional practice, there is still lack of holistic view, in other words, the need to see human beings as 'bio-psycho-social-spiritual' beings who transcend the physical aspect. (10,14) 'Readiness for enhanced coping' (39.3%) was not identified in other studies. This may occur be-cause it is associated with 'Increased readiness for spiritual well-being', although NANDA does not directly report it.…”

“…However, the defining characteristics of these diagnoses are expressed in the bond of the therapeutic treatment, and the diagnosis itself can be confirmed by the patients' self-report, with the nurses responsible only for the qualified listening. (13)(14)(15) It is noticed that little has been done in terms of spiritual needs. Therefore, there is a gap in assistance, in opposition to the theory of Wanda Horta, which points spirituality as a basic need of human beings to be observed and cared for by the nurses in their care planning.…”