Evaluation of Health-Care Providers’ Perception of Spiritual Care and the Obstacles to Its Implementation

OBJECTIVE: Cancer patients face many health challenges, including spiritual issues. Therefore, an awareness of health-care providers’ perspective on spiritual care provision is important. This study aimed to determine health-care providers’ perception of spiritual care and to examine the individual barriers to its implementation in cancer patients. METHODS: The present descriptive study included 136 physicians and nurses. The Spiritual Care Survey was used as a research tool. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 20.0. RESULTS: In this study, 70.6% of the participants considered spiritual care to be influential in the patients’ quality of life. However, 64.7% had received no spiritual care training, while 82.4% indicated a willingness to attend these courses. Regarding the obstacles to providing spiritual care, the highest and lowest scores, respectively, belonged to the lack of time and the person's reluctance to talk about spiritual issues. CONCLUSIONS: Spiritual care has not yet found its proper place in the care setting of Iran, and health-care team members do not have sufficient training to provide this kind of care despite their belief in its positive impact on patients’ quality of life.