What Chaplains Wish Nurses Knew: Findings From an Online Survey

The social relations of prayer in healthcare: Adding to nursing's equity-oriented professional practice and disciplinary knowledge

Although spiritual practices such as prayer are engaged by many to support well-being and coping, little research has addressed nurses and prayer, whether for themselves or facilitating patients' use of prayer. We conducted a qualitative study to explore how prayer (as a proxy for spirituality and religion) is manifest-whether embraced, tolerated, or resisted-in healthcare, and how institutional and social contexts shape how prayer is understood and enacted. This paper analyzes interviews with 21 nurses in Vancouver and London as a subset of the larger study. Findings show that nurses' kindness can buffer the loneliness and exclusion of ill health and in this way support the "spirit" of those in their care. Spiritual support for patients rarely incorporated prayer, in part because of ambiguities about permission and professional boundaries. Nurses' engagement with prayer and spiritual support could become a politicized site of religious accommodation, where imposition, religious illiteracy, and racism could derail person-centered care and consequently enact social exclusion. Spiritual support (including prayer) sustained nurses themselves. We propose that nursing's equity-oriented knowledge encompass spirituality and religion as sites of exclusion and inclusion. Nurses must be supported to move past religious illiteracy to provide culturally and spiritually sensitive care with clarity about professional boundaries and collaborative models of spiritual care.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale: A Cross-Sectional Study in Eight US Nursing Homes

The aim of this study was to test a modified Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale (SSCRS) and report initial findings, based on a cross-sectional descriptive survey from eight nursing homes in the USA. This study examined the psychometric properties of a modified version of the SSCRS for assessing the perceptions of staff (i.e. nurses, rehabilitation staff, food and nutrition service staff, activities staff, social workers, and administrative staff) who work in nursing homes. The modified version of the SSCRS is measuring respondents' perceptions of spirituality, spiritual care, religiosity, and personalized care. Confirmatory factor analysis showed satisfactory goodness of fit for the original four-factor structure of the SSCRS. The modified version demonstrated good internal consistency and reliability (Cronbach's alpha ranging from 0.71 to 0.90). Initial findings showed statistically significant differences across all four sub-scales. Further research is needed to psychometrically test the modified tool.

Preferences for healthcare chaplaincy services among U.S. adults: differences by inpatient and outpatient settings

We examined preferences around spiritual support services delivered by chaplains among U.S. adults in outpatient and inpatient healthcare settings using a cross-sectional national survey of U.S. adults (n = 1,020). For outpatient settings, 5% reported interest in chaplain services, whereas 16% reported interest in inpatient settings. In both settings, a higher perceived value of chaplain services (p < 01) and previous experience with a chaplain (p < .01) were associated with a greater interest in a chaplain consult when adjusting for demographic factors. In both settings, the most desired services were to explore what was most important in the event of a serious illness or injury (46-47%), values related to treatment decisions (43-46%), and connecting to resources for personal strength and resilience (36-39%), whereas exploring more religious concerns was less desirable. There is a need to identify the role of chaplains within the context of healthcare to meet patients' desire for specific services.