Association Among Workplace Spirituality, Spiritual Well-Being, and Spiritual Care in Practice With Multiple Mediators for Clinical Nurses

Abstract

Background: Spiritual care helps individuals encounter the transcendent meaning of their crises. However, nurses report various barriers to providing spiritual care in clinical settings. To facilitate spiritual care among nurses, a more comprehensive understanding of this field is needed. This study was conducted to establish a path model for multiple factors predicting spiritual care among nurses working in hospitals. Method: A cross-sectional descriptive design was used. The participants were 370 nurses with more than 6 months of experience working in general hospitals in South Korea. The measures used in this study were nursing workplace spirituality, a spiritual well-being scale, the Maslach Burnout Inventory—Human Services Survey for Medical Personnel, a scale for compassionate care, a general self-efficacy scale, and spiritual care in practice. Path analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics, version 24.0, and SPSS Amos, version 20.0. Results: Workplace spirituality and spiritual well-being predicted higher spiritual care in practice by sequentially mediating burnout and compassionate care. Conclusion: This study suggests that nurses' spiritual care can be increased via the development of specific strategies focused on enhancing the nursing work-place spirituality of hospital organizations, promoting individual spiritual well-being and compassionate behavior, and reducing burnout among nurses. [ J Contin Educ Nurs. 2023;54(2):89–96.]