Nurses and nursing students views on spiritual care in kerman medical university

Spiritual care is an important component of nursing performance that has not been considered sufficiently in routine activities. Therefore, it seems for providing holistic care, the spiritual dimension should be noticed particularly as a prominent aspect of human being which affects individual's health. This research was done to compare nurse's and nursing student's views about spiritual care in kerman in 2011. This study is a descriptive and comparative study that. The sample consisted of 400 persons (320 nurses and 80 nursing students) that completed Spiritual Care Perspectives Scale (SCPS) questionnaire about spiritual care. For data analysis SPSS 18 and T,ANOVA, Regression, variance analysis were used. Average scores of views regarding the spiritual care was 46.91±4.97 in nursing students and 45.37±4.39 in nurses. There was a significant difference between two groups of nurses and nursing students (p<0.05). In both groups, scores of those who had participated in ethics workshops were high; moreover, a difference was also observed in nurses in respect of workplace hospitals (psychiatry or else) and position (nurse or nursing managers) (p<0.05). Students’ scores were higher than those of nurses that may be due to a special attention to spirituality and spiritual care in nursing education in recent years. Considering the importance of the issue, it is proposed that some educational plans to be prepared to promote nurse's and nursing student's qualifications in respect of spiritual care and acquisition of necessary capacities.