The Knowledge, Practices, and Perceptions of Surgical Nurses Concerning Spirituality and Spiritual Care.

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive study was to describe the knowledge, practices and perceptions of nurses concerning spirituality and spiritual care.

Design: A descriptive study.

Methods: The study was performed with 142 surgical nurses working in three public hospitals in a city in Turkey. A "Personal Information Form" and the "Spirituality and Spiritual Care Grading Scale" were used for data collection. The data were analysed on SPSS 25.0 software.

Findings: While 77.5% of the nurses reported having heard about the concepts of spirituality and spiritual care, 17.6% reported having received instruction concerning spirituality and spiritual care during their initial nursing education and 19.0% after graduation. In addition, 78.2% provided spiritual care in the clinics where they worked, 40.5% reported that patients were given religious support and 37.8% stated that patients were given the opportunity to be involved in their own care. The nurses' total mean spirituality and spiritual care grading scale score was 57.6±5.6. A statistically significant difference was determined in mean scale scores between nurses who had and had not heard about the concepts of spirituality and spiritual care (P=0.049) and between those who practiced and did not practice spiritual care in the clinics where they worked (P=0.018).

Conclusions: The majority of surgical nurses had heard about the concepts of spirituality and spiritual care but had not been exposed to them during their initial nursing education. However, the majority practiced spiritual care in their clinics, and their perception levels were above average.