Kontakt 2013, 15(3):252-259 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2013.030

Dignity of a patient as a part of NIC intervention Spiritual supportNursing

Helena Kisvetrová

Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Fakulta zdravotnických věd, Ústav ošetřovatelství

The aim of the study was to find out the way Czech nurses utilize the "Treating patients with dignity and respect" activity within NIC Spiritual support intervention (5420) and what activities they consider most important for the patient care at the end of life. We used the quantitative method, a semi structured non standardised questionnaire with 29 sets of questions supplemented with Likert's scale. The questions were created in accordance with the defined activities within Spiritual support intervention. The group of respondents was formed by 468 nurses from oncology, haemato-oncology, hospices, long-term care facilities, geriatrics, homes for the elderly and home care agencies in the Czech Republic. The method used for data processing was the descriptive statistics, the chi-quadrate test with Bonferroni's significance correction and the adjusted residuum analysis, and also Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests.
Within NIC Spiritual support intervention the nurses most commonly referred to the activity of "Treating the patient with dignity and respect" (scale medium 1.23). No dependence on the type of work place (p = 0.626) or on the religious faith of the nurses (p = 0.893) was detected. One third of the nurses considered this activity the most important and 64.5% of the nurses assumed in current Czech nursing practise it is always possible to use it in the final stage of a patient's life.
The results showed that Czech nurses feel the spiritual support in a rather existential dimension, which may be related to the gradual secularization of the Czech society. They paid more attention to the activities supporting the dignity of a patient at the end of life than to activities of religious character.

Keywords: dignity; spiritual support; nursing intervention; terminally ill

Received: November 7, 2012; Accepted: May 10, 2013; Published: September 27, 2013  Show citation