Spiritual care by nurses in curative oncology: a national, multicenter, mixed method study

Purpose: To explore the level of and the experiences with spiritual care by nurses in curative cancer care. Methods: In this mixed-method study, nurses were recruited in eight hospitals in The Netherlands. Questionnaire scores were quantitatively analyzed (n=57), and concerned a spirituality and a competence scale, and five questions about spiritual care. Because of data saturation, qualitative analysis was limited to 31 semi-structured interviews. Results: Nurses described few examples of spiritual care. Nevertheless, the great majority of the nurses indicated on the questionnaire that they frequently provide spiritual care. As the questionnaire could be liable to socially desirable responding, we based our conclusions on the qualitative data, and concluded that spiritual care was rather modest among the nurses in this study. Nurses indicated that they had not so much learned how to provide spiritual care in their educational program, rather they had learned it in clinical practice. Conclusions: Spiritual care was rather modest among the nurses in this study in curative oncological care.