The relationship of nursing students' spiritual care perspectives to their expressions of spiritual empathy

Abstract

Guided by Chism's Middle-Range Theory of Spiritual Empathy, the overarching purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which nursing students' spiritual care perspectives account for their expressions of spiritual empathy. In this descriptive correlational study, spiritual care perspectives accounted for 8.6% of the variance in nursing students' (N = 223) expressions of spiritual empathy after controlling for relevant demographic and spirituality variables. Findings of the study suggest that the provision of spiritual care in nursing practice depends, in part, on nurses clarifying their own spiritual care perspectives.