The effectiveness of spiritual care in nursing education: a systematic review

Article type
Year
Authors
Lai SY1, Lin HR2
1TZU CHI University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
2National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Science, Taiwan
Abstract
Background: Spiritual care is an important part of holistic care. Nursing educators should understand current spiritual care, its effectiveness in clinical application and education, in order to meet the spiritual needs of nursing students and clients.

Objectives: To review the evidence concerning the effectiveness of implementing spiritual care programs in nursing education systematically.

Methods: The following electronic databases were searched: MEDLINE, CINAHL, PubMed(OVID), the Cochrane Library, Pro-Quest Dissertations & Theses and Airiti Library (in Chinese) up to November 2015. The key words in the literature search identified eight studies.

Results: After screening the literature, we included eight studies. Five were questionnaires, two were quasi-experimental studies and one was a triangulation study design. The element of spiritual care curriculum design such as the following: each four independent and integrate curriculum. Teaching content including spiritual concepts and spiritual care in nursing process. Teaching objectives have five goals:
1. to explore human spiritual development and spiritual awareness;
2. to analyse the relationship between religion and spiritual activities, and to respect the client's religious activities;
3. to understand the significance and importance of spiritual care;
4. to apply and evaluate the effectiveness of the spiritual care intervention; and
5. to develop the competence of nursing students' spiritual care.
The results of this review present either single or integration curriculum are able to enhance nursing students' ability of spiritual care, spiritual self-awareness and spiritual well-being.

Conclusions: Whether single or integration curriculum can enhance nursing students' knowledge and ability. But the questionnaire was not clearly presented and variables have great differences, so they can not to compare the effectiveness of each study.This article summarizes the content of spiritual care curriculum, teaching methods and teaching strategies to provided objectivity reference to design the curriculum in nursing education.