Effects of religious and spiritual care on burn patients' pain intensity and satisfaction with pain control during dressing changes

Objective: Spiritual care, beside other nursing interventions, creates a balance in body, psyche and soul in order to holistically recover one's health. This research aims to study the effects of a religious and spiritual care program on the intensity of pain and the satisfaction with pain control during the dressing changes for the burn patients in a hospital in Iran in 2017. Methods: This research is a clinical trial study conducting 68 burn patients. The samples were randomly divided into 'experimental' and 'control' groups. The experiment consists of three sessions of spiritual care carried out by the help of the nurse, a clergy and the patient's companion. These sessions have been done before, during and after the dressing change. The pain intensity and the satisfaction with pain control are measured by VAS(1) and NRS2 devices. The data is analyzed via SPSS version 20 and through the statistical exams of independent t-test, paired t-test, chi-squared test and Mann-Whitney exam. Results: Before the intervention, there was no significant difference in the average rate of pain (P = 0.25) and the satisfaction with pain control (P = 0.59) between the experimental and the control groups. While, after the spiritual care program was conducted, there appeared a significant difference (P <0.001): there was a substantial reduction of pain intensity in the experimental group and the satisfaction with pain control in this group increased as well. Conclusions: A religious and spiritual care can help decrease the pain intensity caused by the dressing change and can increase the satisfaction of these patients with pain control. Therefore, it is recommended that the nurses apply the spiritual cares to alleviate the pain and to increase the satisfaction with pain control in burn patients. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved.