Date of Conferral

11-12-2025

Date of Award

November 2025

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Julibeth Lauren

Abstract

Summary The Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project included staff education for critical care nurses. Patients should receive spiritual care to decrease anxiety and depression that often accompany serious illnesses. Spiritual care encompasses inner peace, connection to others, transcendence, and the meaning and purpose of life. This project aimed to teach critical care nurses the importance of providing spiritual care to their patients. The project was designed to increase nursing knowledge, skills, and attitudes of spiritual care by conducting a 30-minute didactic staff education session in the critical care unit. Nurses completed a pretest and posttest using the Spiritual Care Competency Scale (SCCS) to assess their self-perceived knowledge, skills, and attitudes of spiritual care. Next, the nurses viewed a prerecorded PowerPoint (PPT) presentation on spiritual care, followed by role-play using the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire (SpNQ) by Büssing. Fifty percent of the nursing staff (n = 16) who were working during the project’s timeframe were able to attend. Eleven nurses scored high (99 or higher), five scored average (64–98), and no one scored low (below 64). One participant scored the maximum of 135 on both the pretest and posttest, and Participant 6 had the largest increase of 40 points. The postintervention summative evaluation reported that 100% of participants had increased knowledge of the importance of spiritual care. Nurses reported that they plan to incorporate their increased knowledge of spiritual care to improve patient care. The recommendations are for the organization to offer spiritual care topics in the future.

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