Evaluation of Islamic Spiritual Self-care (Musharatah) in the Students of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences

Background and Self-care in religious texts is a comprehensive and unique system, which is derived from the surveillance of God upon one’s actions and control of one's own actions. Since self-care in Islamic teachings has a fundamental role in self-esteem, this study aimed to evaluate the rate of Islamic spiritual self-control in the students of the University of Medical Sciences of Mazandaran, Iran with respect to self-conditioning (Musharatah) in the academic year 2015-2016.
This descriptive study was conducted on 269 students of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, using stratified random sampling method. For data collection, a validated questionnaire, which was rated on a 5-point Likert scale was employed. The data were analyzed using ANOVA, independent t-test, one sample t test, and regression through SPSS software version 16.

The results of this study demonstrated that the mean of Islamic spiritual self-care in terms of self-conditioning (Musharatah) with the value of 37.31 was lower than the average (df=269; P=0.00). In this study, the students of the Faculty of Dental Medicine had the highest self-control scores; however, those of the Faculty of Public Health had the lowest selfcontrol scores. Furthermore, the Islamic spiritual self-care showed a significant correlation with the age and different faculties; however, no significant relationship was found between the parental literacy level and other demographic characteristics including gender.

As the findings of the present study demonstrated, the Islamic spiritual self-care regarding self-conditioning (Musharatah) was lower than the average in the students of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. Regarding this, future studies are recommended to focus on introducing and explaining the benefits of the self conditioning for students to enable them improving their self-esteem and self-care.