Search

This paper presents the preliminary descriptive findings from an online survey commissioned by the Royal College of Nursing to ascertain members' perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care. There is a professional requirement for nurses to achieve competence in the delivery of spiritual care and to assess and meet the spiritual needs of their patients. Recently, the area of spirituality has come under criticism bringing into question the role of the nurse with regard to the provision of spiritual care. A descriptive online survey was conducted with all Royal College of Nursing members to obtain their perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care in an attempt to identify what action they feel is required with regard to this aspect of nursing practice. An online survey consisting of a five-part questionnaire was developed incorporating the Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale. Members were asked to complete the survey during a three-week period in March 2010. Overall, 4054 Royal College of Nursing members responded, making this probably the largest UK survey ascertaining nurses' perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care. Descriptive statistics, frequencies and percentages were used to identify key findings. A Cronbach's alpha of 0·80 was obtained for the Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale. The preliminary analysis confirms that nurses across the full health economy in the United Kingdom consider spirituality to be a fundamental aspect of nursing. The findings indicate that nurses recognise that attending to the spiritual needs of patients enhances the overall quality of nursing care. However, despite all the attention given to the spiritual dimension, the majority of nurses still feel that they require more guidance and support from governing bodies to enable them to support and effectively meet their patients' spiritual needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: This research assessed the relationships between perceived stress and a range of self-reported symptoms and health complaints in a representative sample of students across UK universities. Subjects and methods: The data comprised 3,706 students and was collected between 2007 and 2008 simultaneously at seven universities in three countries of the UK: England, Wales, and Republic of Northern Ireland. A self-administered questionnaire measured health complaints (22 symptoms) and Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale. Sociodemographic and lifestyle data were also collected. Factor analysis developed four groups of health complaints: psychological, circulatory/breathing, gastro intestinal, and pains/aches. Results: The symptoms most often reported as having occurred sometimes/very often in the last 12 months were fatigue (61.0 %), headache (59.5 %) and difficulties to concentrate (54.4 %), while back (43.3 %) and neck/shoulder pain (39.4 %) were also frequent. Multinominal logistic regression revealed a clear association and a linear trend between increasing level of stress and a higher frequency of psychological symptoms which remained significant after adjustment for many other factors. For circulatory/breathing symptoms and for pains/aches, associations with perceived stress were only significant at higher perceived stress levels. There was no association between perceived stress and gastrointestinal symptoms. For most symptoms, poor health was consistently associated with higher frequency of symptoms across all four symptom groups. Similarly, better quality of life was associated with lower frequency of psychological and circulatory/breathing symptoms, but not for the other two symptom groups. Conclusions: The different profiles of reported complaints and their association with perceived stress, poor health and low quality of life should give rise to tailored interventions in this young population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]