Factors Affecting Spiritual Well - Being Among AIDS Patients

Abstract

This descriptive study aimed to examine the level of spiritual well-being of AIDS patients. The study's conceptual framework was founded on the Buddhist concept of spiritual well-being as well as Thai culture, beliefs, and situations to investigate the factors that affected AIDS patients spiritual well-being. The population was AIDS patients who had received the medical services from Banphot Phisai Hospital, Nakhon Sawan Province. The research sample consisted of 115 people using simple random sampling. Data were collected through a personal information, spiritual well-being questionnaire, the patient's hope and goals in life questionnaire, the patient's perceived severity of illness, and a social support questionnaire. Reliabilities were 0.935, 0.801, 0.804, and 0.819, respectively. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient and the Chi-square test.

Results: AIDS patients were mostly male (53.91%), aged between 41 – 50 years old (38.26%), and had the highest education level at primary school (60.87). Factors that were statistically significant and related to the spiritual well-being of AIDS patients were educational level(p<0.001). Furthermore, factors that had statistically significant positive effects on the spiritual well-being of AIDS patients were social support, feeling hopeful and having goals in life, and the perception of the severity of the illness [r=0.298 (p=0.001), 0.202 (p=0.031), and 0.204 (p=0.029), respectively].