An Assessment of Spiritual Care in the Professional Practice of Nursing in Costa Rica

Abstract

Objective: To describe participating nursing professionals’ self-reported responses regarding the importance of spiritual care, the knowledge they report having, the practices they report providing, and their training.

Materials and methods: A quantitative, exploratory, descriptive, cross-sectional study involving 75 nursing professionals practicing in Costa Rica, selected through non-probability convenience sampling. A self-administered digital questionnaire was developed and internally reviewed by the researchers. Absolute and relative frequencies were calculated, and open-ended responses were grouped into descriptive categories.

Results: Overall, 97.3% recognized the importance of spirituality for well-being and recovery, and 98.7% considered spiritual care part of the nursing role. While 81.3% reported knowing how to identify spiritual needs, 69.3% reported being unfamiliar with assessment tools. Moreover, 80.0% reported having received no training in spiritual care, and 97.3% expressed willingness to undertake training. The most frequently mentioned forms of care were religiosity and religious support or support from spiritual leaders, as well as communication and emotional support, each identified in responses from 30 participants (40.0%).

Conclusion: In the study sample, a contrast was found between the high importance attributed to spiritual care and limited reported training. These findings provide an initial basis for exploring training needs and support resources in the settings represented. Due to convenience sampling and the self-reported nature of the data, the results do not establish clinical competence and cannot be generalized to the country’s nursing professional population.

Key Word: Spirituality; Nursing care; Attitude of health personnel.