Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Oct 12;21(1):277.
doi: 10.1186/s12912-022-01056-0.

The correlation between spiritual care competence and spiritual health among Iranian nurses

Akram Heidari  1 , Zahra Afzoon  2 , Morteza Heidari  3
Affiliations

The correlation between spiritual care competence and spiritual health among Iranian nurses

Akram Heidari et al. BMC Nurs. .

Abstract

Background: Considering the importance of spiritual aspects of human beings, spiritual care provision is increasingly recognized as a major duty of healthcare providers, particularly nursing staff. Spiritual care competence is necessary for the nurses to be able to provide spiritual care, but the competence itself is associated with other variables. This study aimed to investigate if the spiritual care competence of nurses is related to their spiritual health.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with the participation of 172 practicing nurses in hospitals affiliated with Qom University of Medical Sciences, selected through stratified random sampling. Participants completed the Persian versions of the Spiritual Health Questionnaire (Amiri) and the Spiritual Care Competence Scale (Van Leeuwen). To examine the correlation between nurses' spiritual health and spiritual care competence, a Spearman coefficient was used and a linear regression analysis was done to determine the predictability of the spiritual care competence of the nurses. The data were analyzed using SPSS v.23 and the significance level was set at 0.05.

Results: The participants showed a mean (SD) score of 108.93 (19.04) on spiritual care competence and 213.38 (16.49) on spiritual health. Spiritual care competence of nurses showed no significant relationship with demographic characteristics and their spiritual health had a significant relationship with gender only. Correlation analysis revealed a significant relationship between spiritual health and spiritual care competence and their subscales. Moreover, the linear regression analysis indicated that the nurses' performance regarding spiritual health can predict their spiritual care competence.

Conclusion: The study revealed that the spiritual care competence of nurses is correlated with their spiritual health and performance as a subscale of spiritual health can predict their spiritual care competence. Thus, it can be concluded that the spiritual health of nurses is an important factor in providing spiritual care for patients and meeting their spiritual needs.

Keywords: Correlation analysis; Iran; Nurses; Regression analysis; Spiritual care competence; Spiritual health.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest concerning the present study among the authors themselves or with other people or organizations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Correlation between spiritual health and spiritual care competence
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Boswell C, Cannon SB, Miller J. Students’ perceptions of holistic nursing care. Nurs Educ Perspect. 2013;34(5):329–33. - PubMed
    1. Rogers M, Wattis J. Spirituality in nursing practice. Nurs Standard. 2015;29(39):51–7. doi: 10.7748/ns.29.39.51.e9726. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Association AHN. What we do? Available from: https://www.ahna.org/About-Us/What-is-Holistic-Nursing.
    1. Abdulla A, Hossain M, Barla C. Toward comprehensive medicine: listening to spiritual and religious needs of patients. Gerontol Geriatric Med. 2019;5:2333721419843703. doi: 10.1177/2333721419843703. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baldacchino D. Spiritual care education of health care professionals. MDPI; 2015.

LinkOut - more resources