• Eur J Oncol Nurs · Oct 2020

    Nurses' response to spiritual needs of cancer patients.

    • Maya Zumstein-Shaha, Betty Ferrell, and Denice Economou.
    • Division of Applied Research and Development in Nursing, Department of Health Professions, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Murtenstrasse 10, CH-3008, Bern, Switzerland. Electronic address: maya.zumsteinshaha@bfh.ch.
    • Eur J Oncol Nurs. 2020 Oct 1; 48: 101792.

    PurposeIn this qualitative study, nurses from the United States of America (USA) and Switzerland were asked to recount their spiritual care experiences with cancer patients and their own responses to their patients' spiritual needs. Recent advances in cancer care have highlighted the importance of spirituality and spiritual care as part of quality palliative care from the time of a patient's diagnosis through end of life. Nurses who play an important role in supporting patients, describe their own discomfort when confronting their patients' spiritual needs.MethodsA qualitative survey was used to collect narratives of nurses' experiences in responding to spiritual care needs (n = 62). The accounts were analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsNurses identified patients as having spiritual needs and their own experiences in addressing spirituality or religion. Patients sought meaning in their illness, which, they believed, led to disease acceptance. Nurses reported their patients' struggles with challenging disease situations and their own challenges in addressing patients' spirituality/religion. With experience, nurses developed ways of talking with patients about spirituality/religion, which profoundly impacted their own lives and resulted in personal growth.ConclusionPatients' spirituality was identified by nurses who tried to address patients' spiritual needs drawing on existing resources. For nurses, supporting patients in their spirituality and finding meaning in the disease situation eventually led to disease acceptance.Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

Want more great medical articles?

Keep up to date with a free trial of metajournal, personalized for your practice.
1,694,794 articles already indexed!

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.