Introduction: Spirituality is an elusive, difficult-to-define, poorly understood notion. Questions of spirituality reappeared in the modern times, in which global as well as local movements and changes challenge our beliefs about meaning and values. Nurse as a holder of holistic health nursing tries to identify all patient's needs, including spiritual ones. Awareness of the spiritual and religious world is one of the duties of a nurse. Purpose: To explore the factors that influence the awareness of spirituality and spiritual care and its implementation in nursing practice. Methods: A descriptive method was used with a literature review. We researched CINAHL with full text and MEDLINE databases between February and July 2017. Results: The review of the literature on spiritual health care outlined three areas that have a significant impact on the provision of spiritual health care - nursing education, personal beliefs of nurses and working environment. Discussion and conclusion: We have discovered that, in order to improve spiritual care, it is necessary to educate nurses and nursing students about the spiritual aspect of nursing, to provide an appropriate working environment for the provision of spiritual care, to encourage nurses for self-reflection and self-awareness. It is necessary to clearly define spiritual health care, nurses’ role in spiritual care, to include spirituality in the process of nursing with clearly set interventions. With the knowledge and awareness of nurses and scientifically supported findings, spirituality can become a recognizable and important part of the entire nursing care.
|