Nurses' lived experiences of spirituality in the workplace: a qualitative descriptive study

Nurses face numerous challenges, including role expansion, heavy workloads, and burnout, which threaten both their well-being and the quality of patient care. Creating a supportive work environment that integrates workplace spirituality is essential to mitigate these adverse effects. Accordingly, this study aimed to explore nurses' lived experiences of spirituality in the workplace.

This study employed a descriptive qualitative design. Participants were selected through purposive sampling, consisting of 14 nurses working in various clinical wards of hospitals in Khoy, Iran. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews conducted within the hospital settings, following the obtainment of written informed consent from each participant. Data were gathered and analyzed concurrently until theoretical saturation was achieved, using a conventional content analysis approach. MAXQDA software (version 12) was utilized to organize and manage the textual data throughout the analysis process.

Inductive data analysis revealed, three main themes, seven categories, and 21 subcategories emerged that reflected the complexity of experiences of workplace spirituality. Three main themes were: (1) human-centeredness in nursing, (2) moral distress, and (3) spiritual coping strategies.

Nurses had an understanding of the spiritual workplace in the context of being able to provide human-centered care to patients and their families. Moral distress and job conflicts hindered the perception of a spiritual workplace. However, they struggled to maintain a sense of workplace spirituality by using spiritual and self-care strategies and meaning reconstruction.