The effect of nursing students' therapeutic communication skills on spiritual care competencies

This study is a cross-sectional, descriptive/relational study conducted to examine the effect of nursing students' therapeutic communication skills on spiritual care competencies. The sample of the research consisted of 468 students (n=468) who were studying at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nursing in the Spring Term of the 2020-2021 Academic Year, who agreed to participate in the research, and filled out the data collection forms completely. Data were collected with "Sociodemographic Data Form", "Spiritual Care Adequacy Scale" and "Therapeutic Communication Skills Scale for Nursing Students", arithmetic mean, standard deviation, Kruskal Wallis, Mann Whitney U, Kolmogrow Smirnov tests, Spearman Correlation and non-parametric Benforrini evaluated by analysis. The mean age of the students participating in the study was 21.29±2.45, 62.18% were female and 26.92% were fourth grade students. 55.13% of the nursing students stated that their communication skills were good, 62% of them did not take any course related to the concepts of therapeutic/nontherapeutic communication, and 50.25% of them stated that they did not have any difficulties while using their therapeutic/nontherapeutic communication skills. 82.48% of the nursing students stated that they did not receive any training/course on spiritual care, 68.2% did not feel sufficient in providing spiritual care, and 96.79% of the students stated that it is necessary to provide spiritual care to the patient/individual as a nurse. According to the sub-dimensions of the Therapeutic Communication Skills Scale for Nursing Students, it was revealed that the students had average non-therapeutic communication skills and high-level therapeutic communication skills, and according to the total score and sub-dimensions of the Spiritual Care Competency Scale, the students' spiritual care proficiency was above the average. In the examination of the relationship between The Therapeutic Communication Skills Scale for Nursing Students and the Spiritual Care Efficiency Scale, the Nontherapeutic Communication Skills Sub-Dimension and the Evaluation and Application of Spiritual Care Sub-Field, Professionalism in Spiritual Care and Patient Counseling Sub-Field, the Patient's Attitude and Communication Sub-domain towards Spirituality, and Spiritual Care A negative correlation was found between the total score of the Proficiency Scale. There is a positive correlation between The Therapeutic Communication Skills Sub-Dimension I and The Therapeutic Communication Skills Sub-Dimension II and the Evaluation and Application of Spiritual Care Sub-domain, Professionalism in Spiritual Care and Patient Counseling Sub-domain, Patient's Attitude and Communication Sub-Dimension towards Spirituality, and Spiritual Care Adequacy Scale total score relationship was found. These determined relationships are also statistically significant. It is recommended to include lessons on spiritual care and therapeutic communication skills in the curriculum of the nursing department, and to conduct case studies on spiritual care and therapeutic communication in students' practical lessons. Keywords: Nursing students, Communication, Therapeutic use, Nursing care, Morale.