Date of Conferral
2016
Degree
Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)
School
Nursing
Advisor
Sue Bell
Abstract
Spirituality has been associated with wholeness, inner peace, and key elements of well-being or quality of life. Spirituality support is particularly important for patients with chronic illness and patients who view spirituality as a way of coping with suffering. Evidence-based education is lacking in schools of nursing and in places of nursing employment on spirituality interventions that nurses can use to improve patient quality of life. The purpose of this project was to determine whether an educational intervention would increase knowledge of spiritual care in a small sample of clinic nurses (n = 37). This project used Watson's caring theory, which is an explanatory, middle-range theory focused on human caring. Watson's caring theory supports the relationship between spirituality and quality of life in patients with a chronic illness. Staff nurses completed the Spirituality Care Competence Scale as a pretest evaluation of spirituality knowledge. Spirituality training, which included evidence-based handouts, articles, and assessments, was followed by a second completion of the Spirituality Care Competence Scale as a posttest evaluation of the training effectiveness. The pretest to posttest knowledge of spiritual care significantly increased (p < .0001) on the 10 questions as measured by a t test statistic. These findings may contribute to social change by guiding training strategies to meet organizational goals for increased nurses' knowledge of and skills in spiritual care delivery for chronically ill patients. Nurses will have increased competency to provide patients with quality holistic care that includes support of spirituality.
Recommended Citation
Gant, April, "Educating Nurses About Spirituality's Effects on Quality of Life With Chronic Illness" (2016). Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies. 2151.
https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/2151
