An Investigation of Television's Potential for Meeting the Spiritual Needs of Hospitalized Adult Patients
Edna M. Fordyce

Hospitalization necessitates major adjustments and limitations for the individual patient. The curtailment of the usual patterns and style of living may be considerable. This may also entail a radical change in one's customary patterns of religious participation including attendance at the worship service(s) of one's choice.

The purpose of the study was to explore the feasibility of meeting spiritual needs of patients through television and other media. The intent was to explore the benefits of television viewing and to determine the relationship of possible benefits to background variables such as attitudes and perceptions of television viewing, church and/or religious worship practices prior to hospitalization and personal characteristics of patients.

The research design utilized was a qualitative/quantitative approach using multi-methods. The Spiritual Well-being Scale and a Patient Information Form were utilized with a face-to-face interview guide.

A sample of twenty-eight male and twenty-nine female informants with varying lengths of hospitalization in four private acute care general hospitals with a. variety of illness and/or conditions was identified. These informants were categorized as to whether they had viewed or not viewed religious television programming while hospitalized. Thirty informants were nonviewers and twenty-seven were viewers. Viewing informants were older, had longer hospital stays and were more frequently regular church attendees compared to the nonviewing informants. Viewers also obtained higher scores on Spiritual and Religious Well-being than did the nonviewers.

The longer a patient remained in the hospital the greater the likelihood that viewing of a religious program may occur. The particular days of the person's hospitalization may influence the availability of programs being broadcast that would be acceptable to the individual patient. The viewing interests of the hospital roommate may influence the viewing of particular program, when a single television receiver is shared by two persons. Spiritual concerns do exist when persons are hospitalized. Media resources can contribute to the meeting of these needs for some persons. However, contacts with significant people such as family, friends, and clergy were preferred to possible media resources by the majority of the informants

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