Spiritual distress : an introduction

Abstract

Spiritual distress is an important component of holistic nursing practice. Internationally, nursing competency to care for patients in spiritual distress has not been well established (Kasar & Nacak, 2021). The goals of this project are to provide a high-level introduction to the concept of spiritual distress, provide a session to teach nurses to identify spiritual distress in oneself and others, and motivate nurses to continue their education on spiritual distress after the session. A 30-minute lunch time educational session was developed and piloted to all employee designations at St. Michael’s Health Centre in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Data was collected from post-intervention surveys. Data analysis concluded that this educational intervention design was effective in educating learners on spiritual distress and that further education on this subject is desired.