Factor Associated with Spiritual Care for Terminally Ill Patients of Professional Nurses

Abstract

Abstract
Spiritual care for terminally ill patients should be emphasized and abilities to provide care for these patients by professional nurses should be developed. This descriptive correlational study examined the relationship among spiritual care’s experience, knowledge in spiritual care, perception of ability for spiritual care, religious belief, and spiritual care for terminally ill patients performed by professional nurses. The sample consisted of 112 professional nurses who work in community hospitals. They were recruited by the simple random sampling technique. Instruments were questionnaires enquiring personal data, the spiritual care knowledge, the perception of spiritual care ability, the religious belief, and the spiritual care for terminally ill patients of professional nurses. Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation coefficients were employed for data analysis.The results showed that the sample had average experience in caring for terminally ill patients for 6.61 years; 33.90 % of them had been trained in caring for terminally ill patients and 47.37% were one-day training.The average score of spiritual care knowledge, perception of spiritual care ability, religious belief,
and spiritual care to terminally ill patients were at a moderate level. Religious belief,
spiritual care knowledge, and perception of spiritual care ability of professional nurses
had a positive correlation with the spiritual care for terminally ill patients. Spiritual care’s
experience was not significantly correlated to the spiritual care for terminally ill patients
among these professional nurses. The results of this study suggested that nurses who
care for terminally ill patients should be prepared knowledge and enhanced their perception
of spiritual care ability. Moreover, the nurses should continue to be trained in providing
spiritual care for terminally ill patients.

Keywords: Spiritual care, Terminally ill patients, Professional nurses