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The Relationship Between Spiritual Care Levels of Turkish Nurses with the Spiritual Well-Being of Their Patients: An Exploratory Study

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between spiritual well-being of patients with the spiritual care levels of nurses. This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted between July and August 2019. The sample was composed of 63 nurses from one university hospital and 142 patients receiving care at the department of internal medicine of the hospital. For data collection, the information form and “Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale” were applied to the nurses, personel information form and “FACIT Spiritual Well-Being Scale” were used for the patients. For data analysis, the descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation analysis, Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis tests were used. The mean age of the nurses was 37.44 ± 6.95 years, and 88.9% were female. The mean age of the patients was 55.04 ± 15.86 years, and 57.7% were female. 89.4% of the patients stated that nurses provided spiritual care. A positive correlation was found between item scores on two scales (r = 0.264, p < 0.001). As the level of spirituality and spiritual care of nurses increases, the level of spiritual well-being of patients increases as well.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the internal medicine nurses and patients who took part in this study. We would like to thank the authors of the scales for permitting us to use the scales.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Internal Medicine Nursing Department, Faculty of Nursing, Ege University, 35100, Bornova, Izmir, Turkey

    Emine Karaman

  2. Public Health Nursing Department, Faculty of Health Science, Izmir Democracy University, Izmir, Turkey

    Özüm Erkin

  3. Public Health Nursing Department, Faculty of Health Science, Cankiri Karatekin University, Cankiri, Turkey

    İlknur Göl

Authors
  1. Emine Karaman
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  2. Özüm Erkin
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  3. İlknur Göl
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Contributions

EK, ÖE, and İG designed the study, EK collected the data and ÖE and İG analyzed the data, EK, ÖE, and İG wrote the manuscript. All authors of this paper have read and approved EK, ÖE, İG submitted the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emine Karaman.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures in this research were performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Before commencing the study, written approval was obtained from the local ethics committee of the medical school of a university hospital (decision no: 19–5.1 T/54) and from the internal medicine wards of the hospital where the study was conducted. Permission was also obtained from the authors of the scales used in the study.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all those who participated in the study.

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Karaman, E., Erkin, Ö. & Göl, İ. The Relationship Between Spiritual Care Levels of Turkish Nurses with the Spiritual Well-Being of Their Patients: An Exploratory Study. J Relig Health 61, 1882–1893 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-021-01194-w

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