Phenomenology study: the nurse perception of experience in providing spiritual nursing care in the cardiovascular unit

Nurses who provide nursing care are urgently required to assess the patient’s spiritual needs so a correct nursing intervention can be given to the patient. Unfortunately, up to present, few instruments are available to specifically focus on patient’s spiritual needs. The aim of this study was to identify the perception of experience of nurses in providing spiritual nursing care to patients in cardiovascular wards as a foundation to develop a specific spiritual nursing care assessment tool. A sample of six nurses participated in this qualitative study. Data collection was conducted through in-depth interviews to nurses used thematic analysis. There were five themes identified: i) spiritual care meaning for nurses; ii) nurse’s current belief in providing spiritual care; iii) barriers in conducting spiritual nursing care; iv) expected solution to eliminate the barriers; v) efforts to improve spiritual nursing care. This study suggest to have a spritual care assessment instruments in order to make it easier for nurses to establish a spiritual nursing diagnosis, so that existing nursing care interventions can be carried out on target according to the client's priority problems.