The impact of spiritual care delivered by nurses on patients' comfort: A propensity score matched cohort utilizing electronic health record data.

BACKGROUND: Spiritual care has been associated with better health outcomes. Despite increasing evidence of the benefits of spiritual care for older patients coping with illness and aggressive treatment, the role of spirituality is not well understood and implemented. Nurses, as frontline holistic healthcare providers, are in a position to address patients' spiritual needs and support them in finding meaning in life. This study aimed to identify spiritual care by analyzing nursing data and to compare the psychological and physical comfort between older chronically ill patients who received spiritual care versus those who did not receive spiritual care. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A propensity score matched cohort utilizing nursing care plan data was used to construct balanced groups based on patient characteristics at admission. 45 older patients (≥65 years) with chronic illnesses received spiritual care with measured psychological or physical comfort and 90 matched controls. To ensure the robustness of our results, two sensitivity analyses were performed. Group comparisons were performed to assess the average treatment effect of spiritual care on psychological and physical comfort outcomes. RESULTS: The mean psychological comfort was 4.3 (SD = 0.5) for spiritual care receivers and 3.9 (SD = 0.9) for non-receivers. Regression analysis showed that spiritual care was associated with better psychological comfort (estimate = 0.479, std. error = 0.225, p = 0.041). While its effect on physical comfort was not statistically significant (estimate = -0.265, std. error = 0.234, p = 0.261). This study provides suggestive evidence of the positive impact of nurses' spiritual care in improving psychological comfort for older patients with chronic illnesses. CONCLUSION: Using interoperable nursing data, our findings suggest that spiritual care improves psychological comfort in older patients facing illness. This finding suggests that nurses may integrate spiritual care into their usual care to support patients experiencing distress.

Spiritual Interventions Delivered by Nurses to Address Patients' Needs in Hospitals or Long-Term Care Facilities: A Systematic Review.

Introduction: Despite increasing evidence of the benefits of spiritual care and nurses' efforts to incorporate spiritual interventions into palliative care and clinical practice, the role of spirituality is not well understood and implemented. There are divergent meanings and practices within and across countries. Understanding the delivery of spiritual interventions may lead to improved patient outcomes. Aim: We conducted a systematic review to characterize spiritual interventions delivered by nurses and targeted outcomes for patients in hospitals or assisted long-term care facilities. Methodology: The systematic review was developed following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, and a quality assessment was performed. Our protocol was registered on PROSPERO (Registration No. CRD42020197325). The CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, and PubMed databases were searched from inception to June 2020. Results: We screened a total of 1005 abstracts and identified 16 experimental and quasi-experimental studies of spiritual interventions delivered by nurses to individuals receiving palliative care or targeted at chronic conditions, such as advanced cancer diseases. Ten studies examined existential interventions (e.g., spiritual history, spiritual pain assessment, touch, and psychospiritual interventions), two examined religious interventions (e.g., prayer), and four investigated mixed interventions (e.g., active listening, presence, and connectedness with the sacred, nature, and art). Patient outcomes associated with the delivery of spiritual interventions included spiritual well-being, anxiety, and depression. Conclusion: Spiritual interventions varied with the organizational culture of institutions, patients' beliefs, and target outcomes. Studies showed that spiritual interventions are associated with improved psychological and spiritual patient outcomes. The studies' different methodological approaches and the lack of detail made it challenging to compare, replicate, and validate the applicability and circumstances under which the interventions are effective. Further studies utilizing rigorous methods with operationalized definitions of spiritual nursing care are recommended.