EXPLORING THE SPIRITUAL HEALTH OF TAIWANESE NURSES WHILE FACING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Yueh-E Lin, Chiu-Tzu Lin, Wen-Pin Yu.

Nursing, Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital; Chang Gung University of Science and Technology, Taoyuan, Taiwan

1. INTRODUCTION

The global outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused clinical front-line nursing staff facing a lot of pressure during the epidemic. Many studies have examined the physical and mental impacts of the pandemic on nurses. however, there has been little research examining spiritual health of nurses.

2. AIM

The study aimed to explore the spiritual health of nurses under the COVID-19 pandemic.

3. METHOD

A cross-sectional study with convenience sampling was used. A total of 376 nurses participated in this study. The Spiritual Health Scale (SHS) was used to explore the nurses’ spiritual health level. This scale mainly measures the spiritual health of nurses and is divided into 5 subscales.There are 24 questions in the 5-point Likert scale and the total score is 24-120 points, and the higher the score represents the higher the level of spiritual health.

4. RESULTS

(1)There are 376 nurses completed the questionnaires with a response rate of 94.0% in this study. The mean age of the participating nurses was 31.52 ±7.97 years, with working experience of 8.70 ±7.77 years.

(2)The mean score of spiritual health of nursing staff is 3.66±.0.59(table 1). The nurses who had religious beliefs had higher spiritual health mean scores (3.71±0.62) than those who had no religion (3.59±0.54), and significance was analyzed ( p=.041). In addition, the level of support received from relatives or hospital had a significant positive and better spiritual health (p<.01)(table 2).

5. CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study provide information for understanding nurses’ spiritual health under the Covid 19 epidemic. The high level of support from friends and family members help nurses to maintain a higher level of spiritual health. These findings could serve as a reference for nurses’ spiritual health.

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We offer special thanks to all participants from Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital for their assistance. This research was supported by a Chang Gung Medical Research Grant (Number CORPG3M0131)