A response to Dawson's critical analysis of 'spirituality as "integrative energy"'

Leadership, Spirituality, and the Legacy of Helen "Lena" Astin

What will be your legacy? is a "big" question that challenges us to consider how we will engage our passions and talents to make a difference in the world. This chapter celebrates the legacy of Helen "Lena" Astin in the context of her contributions to how we think about and exercise leadership and to what we understand about spirituality, particularly the spiritual lives of undergraduate students.

Spirituality and psychological well-being: testing a theory of family interdependence among family caregivers and their elders

The family spirituality-psychological well-being model was developed and tested to explore how spirituality influences psychological well-being among elders and caregivers in the context of Korean family caregiving. The sample consisted of 157 Korean elder-family caregiver dyads in Seoul, Korea. The intraclass correlation coefficient and the actor-partner interdependence statistical model were used to analyze the data. There were significant correlations between elders' and caregivers' spirituality and between elders' and caregivers' psychological well-being. Elders' and caregivers' spirituality significantly influenced their own psychological well-being. The caregiver's spirituality significantly influenced the elder's psychological well-being, but the elder's spirituality did not significantly influence the caregiver's psychological well-being. Findings suggest that elders' and caregivers' spirituality should be assessed within the family to provide holistic nursing interventions.

An exploration of the status of spiritual health among nursing students in Taiwan

OBJECTIVE

Few studies have investigated the spiritual health of nursing students. The purpose of this study was to examine spiritual health in a group of senior nursing students in Taiwan, and to explore the factors that influenced the spiritual health of the group.

METHOD

This was a cross-sectional study. A total of 1276 senior nursing students were selected using a probability-proportional-to-size (PPS) procedure, and were asked to complete a self-administrated questionnaire that included a spiritual health scale (SHS) and a demographic profile.

RESULTS

All study participants were female with an average age of 20.1 years, and most reported a religious affiliation and participation in religious activities. Their spiritual health was moderate; and generally the study metric "connection to others" was the highest factor, and the metric "religion attachment" was the lowest. Certain demographic characteristics, including age, education level, aboriginal characteristic, level of religious devotion, and family atmosphere were predictors of spiritual health.

CONCLUSION

Nursing educators should be aware of the impact of spiritual health on nursing students, and should consider developing spiritual and religious education programs to enhance students' spiritual health and to nurture their ability to supply spiritual nursing care for patients.

Fundamental or foundational obligation? Problematizing the ethical call to spiritual care in nursing

Spiritual nursing care is increasingly being cited in the nursing literature as a fundamental ethical obligation. This obligation is based upon the argument that nurses provide holistic care, spirituality is a universal dimension of the person, and so nurses should care for the spiritual dimension. However, the literature on the spiritual dimension in nursing illustrates widely differing foundational assumptions about this important aspect of care. The philosophic categories of humanism, theism, and monism can be used to illustrate the different understandings of the spiritual dimension, and the implications of these understandings for the competence of the nurse and the nature of the nurse-patient interaction in the context of spiritual care.

Careful nursing: a model for contemporary nursing practice

BACKGROUND

Careful nursing, a system of nursing developed in Ireland by Catherine McAuley in the early years of the 19th century and used by Irish nurses at the Crimean war, has been described as Ireland's legacy to nursing. Although records of careful nursing have been preserved, it has received little attention in the nursing literature.

AIM

The purpose of this study was to conduct a preliminary content analysis of the mainly primary source historical documentation of the careful nursing system and present it within the structure of a contemporary conceptual model of nursing.

METHODS

The documents describing the careful nursing system were studied and re-studied to gain understanding of the philosophical assumptions underlying careful nursing and of the thinking, attitudes, actions and practice of the nurses. Content relating to the four central nursing concepts was identified and summarized.

RESULTS

Careful nursing definitions of person, environment, health and nursing are presented. Ten key concepts of careful nursing practice are identified as disinterested love, contagious calmness, creation of a restorative environment, 'perfect' skill in fostering safety and comfort, nursing interventions, health education, participatory-authoritative management, trustworthy collaboration, power derived from service and nurses' care for themselves. The spiritual dimension of human life and the spiritual in nursing emerge as important characteristics of the model.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of this preliminary analysis require further verification and critical examination. However, the careful nursing model illuminates important aspects of professional nursing and could be further developed to conceptualize and guide nursing practice.

Beyond the metaphysical: health-promoting existential mechanisms and their impact on the health status of clients

This paper aims to conceptualize the issues that surround the notion of existential health. It also seeks to establish the impact that existential issues have upon the health of the individual client and how these might explicitly be applied in clinical practice settings. The ability of clients to draw upon their own existential resources as a fundamental part of their health care experience often goes unrecognized in nursing. Whilst existential mechanisms may be theoretically recognized, as a valid aspect of an individual's unique and personal identity, they are not an established part of the health care activity of nurses. Entrenched biomedical frameworks of care delivery and the interchangeable use of metaphysical health states with existential health states in the established literature present particular dilemmas for the acknowledgement of existential health in clients. A review of the literature has been conducted. This account argues that the failure to recognize and assess a client's existential health status represents a major omission on the part of the clinical nurse. These nurses are, in effect, denying their clients the right to exercise and mobilize an important and valuable health resource.

Towards clarification of the meaning of spirituality

BACKGROUND

Rhetoric about spirituality and nursing has greatly increased, as scientific-based approaches are not fully able to address many human problems, such as persistent pain. Despite the renewed interest and growing literature on spirituality, there is no consensus on a definition of this concept. There is also ambiguity on how this concept is incorporated into nursing practice, research, and education.

AIM

This paper aims to contribute toward clarification of the meaning of spirituality in relevance to health and nursing today through a conceptual analysis process.

METHODS

Information was obtained through dictionary definitions and electronic database searches of literature on spirituality spanning the past 30 years. The criteria for selection included scholarly articles and books with a definition of spirituality, and research studies that investigated the meaning of spirituality to individuals' health. A total of 76 articles and 19 books were retrieved for this analysis.

FINDINGS

Spirituality is an inherent component of being human, and is subjective, intangible, and multidimensional. Spirituality and religion are often used interchangeably, but the two concepts are different. Spirituality involves humans' search for meaning in life, while religion involves an organized entity with rituals and practices about a higher power or God. Spirituality may be related to religion for certain individuals, but for others, such as an atheist, it may not be.

CONCLUSION

In order to provide clarity and enhance understanding of this concept, this analysis delineates antecedents, attributes, constructed case examples, empirical referents, and consequences of spirituality. A proposed definition of spirituality emerged from this process, which may be applied broadly. Implications for nursing practice, education, and research are discussed.