Opinions and attitudes of employees other than healthcare personnel in health institutes towards spirituality

The aim of the study carried out with 110 employees at Tekirdag Namık Kemal University Health Research and Application Center was to determine the attitudes and the opinions of the employees other than healthcare personnel in healthcare institutes towards the spirituality and the factors affecting them. The data of the study being descriptive and cross-sectional were obtained by using a questionnaire form prepared by the researchers after the literature review. Frequency, percentage, average and standard deviation analyses of the obtained data were performed using Chi-Square Test, Shapiro-Wilk Test, Independent Samples T-Test, Mann-Whitney U Test, One-Way ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis Test. The age average of the employees participating in the study was 31,74 ± 7,27, 71. 8% of them was female and 28,2% were male. Concerning education level, 13.6% of them had primary education and lower educational background, 40.9% of them had high school education, 45.5% of them had undergraduate education and higher education. Regarding the income status of the employees, 59.1% of them had a good level of income, 40.9% had a low level of income. In addition, 52.7% of them were married, 47.3% of them were single. They had an average of 1.51 ± 0.5 children and it was found that most of them (63.6%) were data entry personnel in their hometowns (67.3%). It was found that 40,9% of the employees use spirituality to cope with difficulties and that spirituality reduced stress. 35.5% applied spirituality to make themselves happy and 36.4% believed that it held herself/himself on to the life and 33.6% stated that it affected his/her communication, 31.8% was willing to meet the spiritual needs in the hospital environment whereas only 19.1% was completely disturbed by the recognition of the spiritual requirements by everyone. 35.4% of employees believed that employees other than healthcare personnel had to work with healthcare personnel in order to meet the spiritual care requirements of the patients. 78.2% of them stated that spiritual care was insufficient and only 11.8% of them did not want to provide spiritual care. 91.8% of the employees stated that patients had to be met in the spiritual hospital environment whereas 31.8% noted that there had to be an expert in order to meet the spiritual needs of the patients in the hospital. 35.5 % of them felt that patients had the right to request or reject the spiritual support. As a result of the study, a significant was found between employees' education level and finding the spiritual support adequate, the idea that spiritual support contributes to the psycho-social recovery of patients and their duties in the hospital, marital status and the thought that spirituality is effective in coping with diseases and giving moral support to the patients, the thought that spirituality prevents the behaviors that will adversely affect health and having children and their ages, the idea that spirituality affects communication in patients and patients to consider more the spiritual needs of patients in their occupational lives and working in their hometown (p˂0,005).