Do You Want Some Spiritual Support? Different Rates of Positive Response to Chaplains' versus Nurses' Offer

Abstract

Access to spiritual support appears to be important in the hospital setting. The offer of spiritual support can be done by different providers such as doctors, nurses or chaplains. Who should initiate or coordinate this spiritual care. This study addresses the following questions: 1) How many patients accept spiritual proposition? 2) What is the better mode of proposition? The study's objectives are the assessment and comparison of the rates of acceptance to an offer of spiritual support made by nurses and chaplains. Two hundred twenty-three consecutive hospitalized patients hospitalized received a proposal of spiritual support and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Results revealed that 85.8% of patients accepted the offer in the chaplains' group and 38.5% in the nurses' group. Acceptance of the offer of spiritual support was positively associated with the proposal being made by the chaplains by the frequency of meditation and age, and negatively related to physical well-being.