A grounded theory study to explore how nurses overcome barriers to spiritual care

Many patients struggling with illness and disease find that spiritual care, when combined with medical care, provides a source of meaning, comfort, healing, and peace. With increasing demands on nurses and continued emphasis on improving productivity, nurses reported that there was little time to provide spiritual care to patients. The qualitative grounded theory study explored how registered nurses provided spiritual care, the barriers nurses encountered when trying to provide spiritual care, and the strategies nurses used to overcome the barriers to spiritual care. The study also explored Watson's theory of transpersonal caring to determine if nurses experience a caring moment, a point in time when mutual spiritual connection occurred between a patient and a nurse. Interviews with 25 nurses working in inpatient and outpatient settings provided the information for the study. The findings from the study generated 15 themes, and the core theme identified in the study was the nurse's comfort zone. The study demonstrated that nurses have comfort zones that vary in size depending on the nurses' spiritual temperaments. The theory generated from the study, the spiritual temperament theory, recognized the genetic and environmental factors influencing the nurses' ability to provide spiritual care. The study also confirmed the existence of a caring moment as discussed in Watson's theory of transpersonal caring. Recommendations from the study included providing spiritual health care training for nurses and encouraging nursing leaders in universities and health care facilities to model spiritual care.