DNA Reporter - November 2018

November, December 2018, January 2019 DNA Reporter • Page 7
The Importance of Teaching
Spirituality to Nursing Students
Sandra Nolan, PhD(c), MSN, MS, RN
Sandra Nolan
earned her BSN from
the University of
Delaware, her MSN and
Masters in Health Care
Administration from
Wilmington University,
and is currently
completing her PhD in
Nursing Education from
the University of Phoenix.
She has been a nurse
for over 25 years with
a varied background of Sandra Nolan
experience from medical
surgical nursing, step down nursing, community
and home healthcare nursing to prison nursing in
the public sector and nursing education. Sandra
has been a member of the Professional Development
Committee for the Delaware Nurses Association for
2 years and is the current Committee Chair and
serves on the Adult Correction Healthcare Review
Committee for Prison Healthcare for the State of
Delaware. She is also a member of the Holistic
Nurses Association and a member of Sigma Theta
Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. Sandra
can be reached by email at snolan@immculata.edu
or directly at 484-323-3686
Holistic care of patients is paramount in today’s
everchanging health care environment yet as noted
by Aksoy and Coban (2017) spirituality remains one
of the most overlooked and misunderstood concepts
of nursing practice today. Patients are sicker, need
more attention and treatment, and experience
more stress in the health care setting than ever
before. Since Florence Nightingale, caring for the
mind, body and spirit of our patients has been
intuitive and prescribed. Aksoy and Coban (2017)
further noted that spiritual care is becoming more
important due to societies awareness of the value in
healing and wellbeing. Simply stated, patients who
receive spiritual care or have their spiritual needs
met, recover faster and with more positive outcomes
than those patients who do not have their spiritual
needs addressed (Aksoy & Cuban, 2017). The very
nature of nursing is to provide care that includes all
dimensions of the patient.
Nurses, let alone student nurses, remain
uncomfortable with the concept of spirituality.
Spirituality is an important assessment in providing
holistic care to patients, and it is often overlooked
in meeting the needs of patients because of a lack
of understanding of the concept or the nurse’s own
uncomfortableness in approaching the topic with
the patient. It is very important for nursing students
to understand that spirituality and religion are two
very different concepts and very independent of
each other (Lewinson, McSherry, & Kevern, 2015).
When we look at the patient as a whole, spiritual
and psychological events are interconnected.
Spirituality is a sense of meaning and purpose, a
commitment to something greater than ourselves.
Spirituality provides us with a means to cope, feel
connected, and exist. Spirituality is what gives
one’s life meaning or brings one a sense of self and
inner peace. Religion, on the other hand, is a choice
and not essential to exist. Student nurses need to
understand what spirituality means. Nurses do not
need to be religious to assess a patient’s spiritual
needs, and a patient does not need to be religious to
have spiritual needs that need to be met. However,
nurturing one’s own spirituality is a nurse’s ethical
obligation and if ignored deprives the patient of
dignity (Gerber, 2011).
When a person becomes ill, it is often a time
when they turn to their spirituality and need those
around them to understand and respect their
beliefs and practices. Nursing students need to be
taught to treat all patients with dignity, respect,
and compassion. Assessing a patient’s spiritual
needs is essential at the time of admission and
throughout a hospital stay. Nursing students need to
become comfortable asking their patients questions
regarding how their spirituality affects their hospital
stay, their illness, their family, and their own
personal connections with a higher power.
Pullen, McGuire, Farmer and Dodd (2015)
noted the importance of spirituality in nursing
education and the need to incorporate the essence of
spirituality assessment into curriculum in preparing
nursing students. In order to increase nursing’s
ability to assess the spiritual needs of patients,
the way nurses are prepared to practice must be
addressed first. Spirituality is a difficulty concept
for nursing students to understand and incorporate
into practice. It is important for nurse educators to
use every opportunity to introduce student nurses to
the concept of spirituality in practice early in their
academic careers. Obrien (2017) noted that modern
nursing text books in fundamentals and medical
surgical nursing now address the importance of
teaching nursing students the need to incorporate
spirituality into practice. What text books however
do not do is help nursing students to understand
their own spirituality so that they are comfortable in
exploring the concept with their patients.
Nursing instructors both in the classroom and
in the clinical area must incorporate activities such
as reflection, simulation, and assessment into the
learning process to help increase nursing students
level of comfort in providing spiritual care. The
emphasis in the educational process needs to help
student nurses identify their own spirituality in
order to assess a patient’s spirituality. Gerber (2011)
noted that focusing on the spiritual needs of patients
rather than delegating this need to the hospital
chaplain is essential in nursing practice. However,
if a student nurse is uncomfortable with a spiritual
assessment, knowing the other resources available
to assist the patient in meeting their spiritual needs
is just as valuable.
One of the most important lessons for a student
nurse to learn is to have a caring and empathetic
presence. As nursing students explore the concept
of spirituality and gain a greater awareness of
their own spirituality, meeting the needs of the
patient becomes easier. There are many different
tools available to assess spirituality in patients.
Some are rather lengthy and this in and of itself
lends to the problem due to time constraints and
other task facing the nursing role. As further noted
by Pullen et al. (2015), nursing interventions that
provide for the spiritual needs of the patient lend to
positive outcomes and life satisfaction with health
care decisions. Nurse educators must incorporate
clear expectations that provide the student with
the knowledge, skills, and abilities to first know
themselves so that they can meet the needs of the
patients they are providing care to. Spirituality
must be threaded throughout all nursing courses
in a curriculum. Students need to have clinical
experiences which incorporate exploration of their
own spiritual needs as well as the spiritual needs of
the patients.
Knowing that nurses and nursing students
struggle with the concept of incorporating
spirituality into the care of their patients, the
question then becomes how can nurse educators
in academia better prepare nursing students to
practice spirituality with their patients and carry
the practice over when they become licensed nurses.
It is essential in today’s health care setting to
incorporate the mind body and spirit in the healing
of our patients and incorporating this practice in to
academia essential.
As noted by Lewinson et al. (2015), evidence
supports the need for spirituality to be a part of
nursing students’ education. Furthermore, in
order to accomplish this task, there needs to be
multiple methods that reach various learning styles
and needs of the students. As student nurses are
educated to provide spiritually competent care,
their level of comfort will increase and their ability
to meet the needs of patients holistically advance in
practice. With all that we know about spirituality
and the research to date, it is imperative that
nursing education incorporate spiritual care in
preparing nursing students so that these students
as nurses meet the needs of their patients, society,
and most important their ethical obligation to care
for themselves.
References
Aksoy, M. & Coban, G. I., (2017). Nursing students’
perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care.
International Journal of Caring Sciences, 10(3), p.
1136-1146.
Gerber, V., (2011). How focusing on spiritual needs
benefits the nurse. American Nurse Today 6 (4).
Retrieved from https://www.americannursetoday.
com/from-our-readershow-focusing-on-spiritualneeds-benefits-the-nurse/
Lewinson, L. P. McSherry, W., & Kevern, P. (2015).
Spirituality in pre-registration nurse education
and practice: A review of the literature. Nurse
Education Today, 35, p. 806-814. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1016/j.nedt.2015.01.011
Pullen, L., McGuire, S., Farmer, L & Dodd, D., (2015).
The relevance of spirituality to nursing practice
and education. Mental Health Practice, 18 (5), p.
14-18. Doi:10.7748/mph.18.5.14.e916
Obrien, M. E., (2017). Spirituality in nursing: Standing
on holy ground (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones
and Bartlett Learning.
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