| The spiritual dimension is an integral component of humankind's health and well-being. At the core of the spiritual dimension is the drive to find meaning and purpose in life's experiences. An individual's quest to find meaning an purpose is enhanced when confronted with a life threatening illness like cancer. Nurses who care for these patients need to be cognizant of their own spiritual self so that they may appropriately attend to the spiritual dimension of these patients. It was, therefore, the purpose of this study to investigate the relationship of the antecedent factors of age, ethnicity, and education, and the mediating variables of intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity, and spiritual well-being on Israeli oncology nurses' attitudes toward spiritual care. The Neuman Systems Model provided the framework that guided this descriptive study.; The sample of 155 nurses was drawn from the membership of the Israeli Oncology Nursing Association. Nurses participating in the study completed four instruments: the Revised Age Universal I-E Scale measured intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity; the Spiritual Well-Being Scale measured spiritual well-being; a subscale of the Spiritual Care Perspective Survey measured attitudes toward spiritual care; the Personal Profile Form gathered demographic and other personal information.; A path model guided the testing of the hypotheses and research question. A sequence of regression analyses were conducted to determine significant paths. Spiritual well-being, intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity, age, ethnicity, and education accounted for a small (R 2 = 11.9%; R2 adj. = 8.3%) but significant (p = .004) amount of the total variance of attitudes toward spiritual care. However, only spiritual well-being (.39, p = .001), extrinsic religiosity (-.26, p = .003), and education (.16, p = .04) demonstrated significant direct relationships to attitudes toward spiritual care. Post hoc, one way analyses of variance were performed on intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity, spiritual well-being and attitudes toward spiritual care to determine significant differences in nurses' mean scores. There were significant differences between secular, traditional, and religious nurses' intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity, and spiritual well-being. However, no significant difference was found between nurses' degree of religiosity and attitudes toward spiritual care. |
