Need assessment and development of the educational goals of spiritual care delivery by the nurses

From the Professional and ethical viewpoint nurses are required to provide spiritual care as part of holistic care to the patients.this study aimed to determine the nurses’ educational needs for delivering the spiritual care and formulating the educational need-based goals.
This study was conducted on the basis of the Delphi technique using the experts’ opinions in two phases.30nurses were selected through the purposive sampling method.A questionnaire consisting of an open-ended question which evaluate the educational needs concerning the provision of spiritual care was filled out by each nurse then,the needs with higher frequency were listed and returned to the nurses in two separate rounds to determine their degrees of importance and priority.In the second phase of the study,the educational goals for the needs with more than 80%agreement coefficient were set through literature review and were sent to 20 experts.After the data were analyzed general, partial and behavioral educational objectives were determined.
25 needs were selected as the final needs and three main goals including “The development of self-awareness concerning the spiritual dimension”,"The explanation of spirituality in nursing profession and its importance in nursing care"and"Preparing the nurses for provision of the spiritual care"were identified as general goals of the spiritual care curriculum.
The findings can be beneficial as a practical guide for development of a spiritual care educational curriculum in nursing profession in order to enhance the nurses’knowledge and skills in the provision of spiritual care to the patients.Furthermore,these findings appear to provide basic information for further research in this context.