Study measures nurses' attitudes about providing spiritual care

Although spiritual care of patients has been reemphasized recently, it remains a sorely neglected aspect of nursing responsibility. The research described in this article focused on one of the major explanations advanced for this neglect: that many nurses personally lack the spiritual resources and the spiritual well-being to effectively meet patients' needs in this regard. Twenty-four graduate nursing students and 29 nursing students in their senior year were surveyed. Two research instruments were used: the Spiritual Well-Being (SWB) Scale, which measures an individual's religious and existential welfare; and the Health Professional's Spiritual Role (HPSR) Scale, which measures attitudes regarding the part that care providers should play in patients' spiritual care. The study confirmed the correlation between a nurses' spiritual well-being and his or her views about the provision of spiritual care by health professionals. The research has several important implications. For example, the SWB Scale can be used by nurses to assess patients' spiritual needs and to determine which nursing interventions are most effective in meeting these needs. Moreover, nurses who score high in the SWB and HPSR scales can be trained as "spiritual specialists," in the same way that nurses are trained in other health care specialties.