Abstract

Spiritual Nursing Care (SNC) can be said to be a specific line of care in nursing practice that is relied upon for hope, meaning and life in patients during the period of their management. However, studies reported that there is the inadequate practice of spiritual nursing care among nurses and thiscould be attributed to several factors. Thus, the study evaluated the level of practice of spiritual nursing care among nephrology nurses in two renal centres in Nigeria. A nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest (before and after), a quasi-experimental research design was adopted in the study. A total enumeration approach was taken to purposively sample 13 and 15 nephrology nurses at the control and intervention centres respectively. A self-developed questionnaire was one of the tools used after ensuring face and content validity, pretested, and the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was 0.879; the other research tools were a rating scale and observation guide. Data for this study were analyzed using the statistical package for social science Version 25 and thematic analysis. Descriptive statistics (frequency distribution table, percentages, mean and standard deviation), thematic analysis, and regression were used to analyze the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents. Three research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. Results show the socio-demographics of the respondents, four themes emerged Nurses' Perception of Spiritual Nursing Care, Nurses' attitude to spiritual caregiving, Nurses' discernment of spiritual needs and Nurses professional roles. Factors influencing SNC were identified to be knowledge of SNC, the religious background of both the nurses and patients, cultural background, nursing care time frame, Nurse: patient ratio, workload, societal view, and inadequate support among many others. It further shows that the cultural background of the patient and societal view is predictive of the practices of SNC and; the practices of SNC go beyond religious denominations at a 0.05 level of significance. Nephrology nurses do practice Spiritual Nursing Care; however, their level of practice is not optimal. There is need to improve on knowledge to provide appropriate and holistic care at all times. It is also pertinent to say that socio-demographic characteristic such as religious denomination has little/no influence on who practices Spiritual Nursing Care or not. It is therefore recommended that more awareness be created on Spiritual Nursing Care and its importance at every stage of learning; it should be included in curricula of learning and emphasized during continuous education programs of Nurses including the Mandatory Continuing Professional Development Programme (MCPDP) for Nurses in Nigeria to improve individual’s interest.