The Effect of Nurses’ Spirituality and Spiritual Care Status upon Death Perceptions

Purpose:This study was done to investigate how nurses’ spirituality and spiritual care status affected death perceptions. Material and Methods:The population of this descriptive study was consisted of nurses who worked at palliative care clinic and intensive care unit of a city hospital located in a city. No sampling was made in the study and the study was completed with 91 nurses who volunteered to join the study. To collect study data; Information Request Form used to collect characteristics of nurses’ socio-demographic characteristics and spiritual care and death concept- and Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale and Death Attitude Profile Scale were used. To analyze the data; percentages, means, Kruskall Wallis, Mann Whitney-U, and correlation analysis were used. Results: It was identified that nurses’ average age was 31.87±7.0, 67% of them were female, 63.7% of them had undergraduate degree, 37.4% of them had a working period of 6-10 years and 81.3% of them were employed at intensive care units. Among the participant nurses, 64.8% did not receive on-the-job training on spiritual care, whereas 53.8% of them did not receive on-the-job training on the concept of death. Nurses’ average total score of Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale was 42.93±6.08 and average total score of Death Attitude Profile Scale was 108.67±18.08. It was understood that there was a positive and weak correlation between nurses’ spirituality, spiritual care status and their attitudes towards death. Conclusion:According to the study result; it was found that status of nurses’ perceiving spirituality and spiritual care concepts and their attitudes towards death were at moderate level. As the level in which nurses perceived spirituality and spiritual care concepts increased, so did their level of positive attitudes towards death. It may be recommended that nurses who are employed at critical units such as palliative care clinics and intensive care units should be given trainings about spirituality, spiritual care and death.