Spiritual care in Christian parish nursing

Leslie Van Dover · Jane Bacon Pfeiffer

27 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Advanced Nursing

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology Contemporary Christian Leadership and Education Palliative and Oncologic Care

Abstract

AIM: This paper reports the development of a substantive theory to explain the process parish nurses use to provide spiritual care to parishioners in Christian churches in a context where patients and nurses share a common set of values. BACKGROUND: Despite a surge of interest in spirituality and spiritual care in nursing, consensus is lacking on how care should be conceptualized and provided. METHOD: Grounded theory method was used to explore and describe the processes 10 American parish nurses experienced and used as they gave spiritual care. Data were collected between 1998 and 2001. Participants were interviewed and audiotapes transcribed verbatim. Constant comparative methods were used to analyse more than 50 separate incidents reported by the nurses. FINDINGS: From its initial emergence as the core category, 'Bringing God Near' became a Basic Social Process theory of giving spiritual care for these parish nurses. This Basic Social Process became a theory through writing theoretical memos that described how the 'main concern' of the nurses to give spiritual care was resolved. Phases within the process include: trusting God, forming relationships with the patient/family, opening to God, activating/nurturing faith and recognizing spiritual renewal or growth. The essence is bringing God near to people as they face health challenges. Findings from the study and spiritual care literature are integrated in the discussion. CONCLUSION: The parish nurses' spiritual challenge is to respond to what God is directing the nurse to be and do to strengthen people spiritually. This spiritual care can help restore the patient's sense of well-being, and encourage growth in faith. Those interested in providing and teaching spiritual care in the church context will find this theory useful as a conceptual guide.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 27 citations exist upstream.

References

1994Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook 1968The Discovery of Grounded Theory; Strategies for Qualitative Research 1980Qualitative research and evaluation methods 1994An Expanded Sourcebook Qualitative Data Analysis 1998Doing grounded theory : issues and discussions 1993Rigor or rigor mortis 2001The Grounded Theory Perspective: Conceptualization Contrasted With Description 2003Psycho‐spiritual well‐being in patients with advanced cancer: an integrative review of the literature

Cited by

2011To pray or not to pray: a question of ethics 2011Patients of parish nurses experience renewed spiritual identity: a grounded theory study

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.