Pharmacy and Nursing Students' Perceptions Regarding the Role of Spirituality in Professional Education and Practice

Pharmacy students' perceived barriers to spiritual care: A qualitative study

Background

Spiritual care (SC) is an important component of whole person care, a goal that many pharmacists embrace. Knowledge about barriers to incorporating SC in pharmacy practice may allow understanding of how to increase its provision.

Objectives

The objective of the study was to investigate pharmacy students' perceived personal and professional barriers to incorporating SC in pharmacy practice.

Methods

Second-year pharmacy students (n = 62) who attended a required class lecture on SC in healthcare responded to three open-ended questions that explored beliefs about SC in pharmacy practice. Students' responses were thematically analyzed using NVivo.

Results

Most (68%) of the students were female; 34% were Asian American. Students identified the following barriers to incorporating SC: limited or lack of time for SC, lack of supervisor and company support for SC, discordant pharmacist-patient spiritual beliefs, discomfort with talking about spirituality, lack of knowledge about spirituality and SC, personal factors, patient refusal of SC, fear of offending patients by discussing spirituality, and pharmacy environment.

Conclusion

Major barriers to SC include lack of time for SC, lack of supervisor and company support for SC, and discordant pharmacist-patient spiritual beliefs. Future studies should be conducted to investigate these and other barriers to SC in pharmacy practice.

An online survey to describe pharmacy student spirituality and spiritual care perspectives

INTRODUCTION

Little is known about student pharmacists' perspectives of spirituality and spiritual care (SC) in pharmacy education and practice. The purpose of this study was to examine student pharmacists' perspectives about spirituality and incorporating SC in pharmacy education and practice.

METHODS

Student pharmacists were recruited from two private pharmacy schools in California, one religiously-affiliated and one non-religiously affiliated. A faculty member at each school invited student pharmacists via email or through Zoom (Zoom Video Communications) chat to complete the 37-item online survey through an embedded link. The investigator-designed survey was comprised of 22 items inquiring about spirituality and SC as well as several items assessing demographic and religious characteristics.

RESULTS

Participants included 470 student pharmacists (87.2% response rate) who were 28.9 ± 5.7 years old on average. Half of the respondents (50.5%) attended the non-religiously affiliated university. Most of the respondents were female (67%), Christian (67.8%), spiritual (79.2%), and religious (75.2%). They "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that: "understanding patients' spiritual beliefs is an important part of pharmacy practice" (83%), "I would pray with my patients as a pharmacist" (54.8%), "it is appropriate for a pharmacist to have spiritual or religious conversations with patients" (52.9%), and "it is appropriate for a pharmacist to pray with and for patients who request it" (66.9%). These beliefs were positively correlated with self-reported religiosity and spirituality.

CONCLUSIONS

Most students considered themselves spiritual and religious and felt that spirituality and learning about SC were important. The respondents' SC perspectives were associated with their religiosity and spirituality.