Determination of spiritual support needs of patients and perceptions of spiritual support of health professionals

This research was carried out to determine the spiritual support needs of the patients, to identify the spiritual support perception of the healthcare professionals and to improve the Scale for Patient Spiritual Support Needs. The research included 289 inpatients in Afyon Kocatepe University Hospital Clinics and 270 healthcare professionals working in Afyon Kocatepe University Hospital. For determination of the patients' spiritual support needs, "Patient Socio-Demographic Characteristics and Information Form", "Scale for Patient's Spiritual Support Needs", and "Beck Anxiety Inventory" were used. For determination of the spiritual support perception of the healthcare professionals, "Healthcare Professionals Socio-Demographic Characteristics and Information Form", and "Spiritual Support Perception Scale" were used. 50.5% of the patients were male and 49.5% were female. 80.6% of the patients stated that they expected a spiritual support from nurses and 19.7% stated that the nurses care about the spiritual support. It was concluded that 72.7% of the patients wanted to receive spiritual support from the healthcare professionals, whereas 70.9% wanted to receive spiritual support from their families and relatives. 67.1% of the health professionals consist of nurses, 18.1% from doctors, 6.3% from EMTs, 5.9% from health officers and 2.6% from midwives. 53.7% of the healthcare professionals stated that they had previously been informed about spiritual care, and 80% stated that they had previously received no training on spiritual care. In our study, it was concluded that patients had high expectations for spiritual support, and that the health professionals could not meet the spiritual support expectations of the patients at an adequate level. Key Words: Spiritual care, Spiritual need, Scale improvement, Healthcare professionals