New Zealand hospice nurses' self-rated comfort in conducting spiritual assessment

Aim: To measure how comfortable hospice nurses in New Zealand are in conducting spiritual assessment and explore potentially associated factors. Design: Cross-sectional, mixed-methods, descriptive study. Sample and setting: Sixty hospice nurses from three New Zealand hospices. Methods: An investigator-designed questionnaire measured respondents' comfort with asking patients spiritual assessment questions proposed for use in the health-care literature. Other items assessed personal and work-related factors. Open questions generated data about how these nurses assess spirituality. The data was analysed using measures of central tendency, binomial non-parametric tests, and content analysis. Findings: These nurses were generally comfortable with proposed spiritual assessment questions and perceived spiritual assessment to be important. Personal factors including age, years in nursing, religiosity, and spirituality were not related to this comfort; however, training was associated with comfort. Conclusion: These findings underscore the importance of training and show how nurses can be comfortable with and capable of assessing patient spirituality.