Spiritual Nursing Care at The Nurse's Experience
Cindy Bullard

The research question for this study was: What is the nurse's experience in providing spiritual nursing care? Because most of the research on spirituality has been done from a quantitative perspective and has not been nurse-focused, the qualitative method of phenomenology was used to investigate the nurse's lived experience in providing spiritual nursing care. This study was conducted in a rural Northeastern state. Seven participants were recruited using volunteer and nominated methods of sampling. All participants were females between the ages of 32 and 47 who worked in a variety of health care settings. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. Data were obtained using an open-ended interview guide which was revised based on ongoing data analysis. Audio taped interviews lasted sixty to one hundred twenty minutes and were then transcribed verbatim. Colaizzi's method of data analysis was used. Two categories emerged from the data analysis. One was Personal Experience and the other was Professional Experience. Personal Experience focused on the nurse's own spiritual growth and spiritual awareness as antecedents to providing spiritual nursing care. It was characterized by the themes of Process, Meaning and Purpose, and Relatedness. Professional Experience focused on the nurse-patient interaction in spiritual nursing care and was characterized by the themes of Holism, Presence, Doing, and Reciprocity. Connectedness emerged as the unifying construct which integrated and exemplified the nurse's Personal and Professional Experiences in providing spiritual nursing care. Supplemental findings included three participants who actively sought to provide spiritual nursing care to their peers. The themes as explicated revealed many similarities with other nursing literature on spiritual care and nurse caring. Implications and recommendations include the need to explore this same research question with a different population, for example, nurses who are male, non-Christian or atheist, older, or younger than this sample. It is also necessary to provide resources and create an atmosphere conducive to implementing holistic care which includes spiritual nursing care. Because the study participants emphasized drawing primarily from their own beliefs and experiences in providing spiritual care, values clarification for both students and faculty is recommended.