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Critical Care Nurses' Experiences With Spiritual Care: The SPIRIT Study
Nigel Bone1, Marilyn Swinton2, Neala Hoad2
1Nigel Bone is a fellow in spiritual care and a registered psychotherapist, Spiritual Care Department, St Joseph's Healthcare, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Marilyn Swinton is a research coordinator, Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Neala Hoad is a registered nurse and research coordinator, Department of Critical Care, St Joseph's Healthcare. Feli Toledo is a chaplain and registered psychotherapist, Spiritual Care Department, St Joseph's Healthcare. Deborah Cook is a professor and intensivist, Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact and Department of Medicine, McMaster University; and Department of Critical Care, St Joseph's Healthcare. nigel.bone@mail.utoronto.ca.
Background:
Little is known about the effect of chaplains on critical care nurses who are caring for critically ill patients and their families.
Objective:
To understand nurses' experiences when they make a referral to the Spiritual Care Department for a patient or the family of a patient who is dying or deceased. Specific aims were to explore spiritual care's effect on nurses and how nurses understand the role of spiritual care in practice.
Methods:
A qualitative descriptive study using in-person, semistructured interviews in a 21-bed medical-surgical intensive care unit in a teaching hospital. Purposeful sampling identified nurses who had at least 5 years of experience and had cared for at least 5 patients who died on their shift and at least 5 patients for whom they initiated a spiritual care referral. Interviews were digitally recorded and anonymized; conventional content analysis was used to analyze transcripts. Three investigators independently coded 5 transcripts and developed the preliminary coding list. As analysis proceeded, investigators organized codes into categories and themes.
Results:
A total of 25 nurses were interviewed. The central theme that emerged was presence, described through 3 main categories: the value of having chaplains present in the intensive care unit and their role, nurses' experiences working with chaplains, and nurses' experiences providing spiritual care.
Conclusion:
Nurses considered spiritual care essential to holistic care and valued the support chaplains provide to patients, families, and staff in today's spiritually diverse society.