Spiritual care competence and its associated factors in oncology clinical nurses of tertiary hospitals

Objective To investigate the spiritual care competence of oncology clinical nurses, to analyze related influencing factors, and to provide reference for nursing managers to improve the spiritual care competence of oncology clinical nurses. Methods There were 316 participants recruited from 2 tertiary hospitals in Xi'an by convenience sampling from December, 2017 to January, 2018. Basic data questionnaire, spiritual care competence scale and Chinese big five personality inventory-brief version were used to collect data. Pearson correlation analysis, univariate ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis H rank-sum test were used for univariate analysis. Stepwise regression analysis was used to analyze the influencing factors of spiritual care competence. Results The score of spiritual care competency was 69.48±12.32 with the highest score in subscale of "spiritual attitude towards patients" and the lowest score in subscale of "ability of professional development and quality improvement". The score of Big Five Personality was 163.16±22.04 with the highest score in subscale of "pleasant" and lowest score in subscale of "open". After hierarchical stepwise regression analysis, age, spiritual care training experience, agreeableness and seriousness were associated with the spiritual care competency, which could explain 53.4% of the total variation. Conclusion Nursing managers should arrange spiritual care work according to the personality, invite senior nurses to discuss or give a speech on spiritual care on a regular basis, create more opportunities for oncology nurses to participate in spiritual care training and improve the overall level of spiritual care in the department.