Nursing students' perceptions of clients' spirituality, spiritual needs, and spiritual care in faith communities

Spirituality is an essential component of nursing education and nursing practice. This interpretive study inquired into nursing students' perceptions of their clients' spirituality, recognition of spiritual needs and provision of spiritual care in faith communities. The following research question was addressed: To explore nursing students' perceptions of their clients' spirituality as a dimension of their experience, to determine if they recognize spiritual needs and do they provide spiritual care for their clients in faith communities?;Semi-structured interviews of 16 nursing students were conducted. Participants were obtained from a large public metropolitan university in a mid-atlantic state. Data collection included a demographic inquiry, semi-structured interviews and written comments by the nursing students on the transcribed interviews.;Interpretive phenomenology served as the philosophical framework for interpreting the data. All interviews and comments were analyzed using van Marten's (1997) approach to human science research analysis. The interpretation of the data revealed three overarching themes. Theme one was "Difficulty articulating perceptions of spirituality", this was the most challenging question for most of the nursing students. Theme two was "Lack of preparation to recognize and/or intervene with clients spiritual needs", and theme three was "Permission sought by concerned nursing students to include spirituality in their student nursing practice". Data suggested that including spirituality, spiritual awareness, and spiritual care in nursing curricula could be the first step to assisting nursing students to provide spirituality competent care.;Recommendations from this research for nursing education, nursing practice, and future inquiries are described.