Assessing Spiritual Care Competency and Influential Factors among Nurses at the National Institute of Cancer Care, Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Background: Spiritual care plays a crucial role in uplifting the quality of life of patients. Nurses need to have the best competency in spiritual care to provide a profound holistic care. There are no published studies assessing the competencies of nurses in providing spiritual care for patients with cancers in the Sri Lankan context.

Objective: To assess the spiritual care competency and the associated factors among nurses who employed at national Institute of cancer care, Sri Lanka

Methods: This quantitative descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among 220 nurses who were purposively selected from National institute of cancer care. Pre-tested self-administered questionnaire containing a 27-item spiritual care competency scale (SCCS) with a Likert scale from 1 to 5 levels of responses was used to collect data. The questionnaire consists five subdomains; assessment and implementation of spiritual care, professionalization and improving the quality of spiritual care, personal support and patient counselling, attitudes towards patient spirituality and communication. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (Pearson correlation and independent sample t-test) were used to analyse the data.

Results: The study findings showed that the mean±SD age of the participants were 33.66±8.56 and majority (91%) of them were females and more than half (52%) were married and only 24% were graduates. Most of them (71%) have heard the term spiritual care and 27% have learned about spiritual care from hospital manuals. The overall mean±SD score of the SCCS was 100.7±10.6, showing a moderate competency. Communication and attitudes towards patient spirituality scored highest competencies with mean scores (out of 5) of 4.1 and 3.9, respectively. There was a weak significant relationship with age (p=0.021, r=0.155) and working experience (p=0.007, r=0.181).

Conclusion: Spiritual care competency among Sri Lankan nurses who serve at national institute of cancer care was at moderate level. The findings suggested to conduct awareness programmes for nurses to improve the competencies on spiritual care.