Spiritual Care in Hospitalized Patients

Background: Spiritual needs are among an individual's essential needs in all places and times. With his physical and spiritual dimensions and the mutual effect of these two dimensions, human has spiritual needs as well. These needs are an intrinsic need throughout the life; therefore, they will remain as a major element of holistic nursing care. One of the greatest challenges for nurses is to satisfy the patients' spiritual needs.

Methods: This is a qualitative study with hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Data were collected from 16 patients hospitalized in internal medicine-surgery wards and 6 nurses in the respective wards. Data were generated by open-ended interview and analyzed using Diekelmann's seven-stage method. Rigorousness of findings was confirmed by use of this method as well as team interpretation, and referring to the text and participants.

Results: In final interpretation of the findings, totally 10 sub-themes, three themes including formation of mutual relation with patient, encouraging the patient, and providing the necessary conditions for patient's connection with God, and one constitutive pattern, namely spiritual need of hospitalized patients.

Conclusions: Spiritual needs are those needs whose satisfaction causes the person's spiritual growth and make the person a social, hopeful individual who always thanks God. They include the need for communication with others, communication with God, and being hopeful. In this study, the three obtained themes are the spiritual needs whose satisfaction is possible in nursing system. Considering these spiritual aspects accelerates patient's treatment.