Relationship between Visiting Nurses’ Spirituality, View of Life and Death, and Personal Attributes −From a Survey of Visiting Nurses in Prefecture A−

Abstract

This study aimed to clarify the relationship between visiting nurses’ spirituality, death attitudes and other personal attributes. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 122 visiting nurses working in 25 facilities in Prefecture A, with their consent to participate in the study. The final analysis was done using 80 complete responses. We measured their views using the Spirituality Rating Scale (SRS) and the Death Attitudes and measured their other personal attributes such as working years and end of life care experience. Spearman’s rank correlation analysis was performed to examine the relationship between spirituality, death attitudes, and personal attributes. Next, multiple regression analysis was performed with spirituality as the dependent variable and the death attitudes and personal attributes as independent variables to examine the influencing factors. As a result, all subfactors of SRS and total score were related of the “Afterlife belief” and “Life purpose”, factor of death attitudes. It was considered that these factors of visiting nurses’ death attitudes were strongly influenced to self- spirituality, consciousness on connection to afterlife, and how to view focused to life not death. It was considered that these factors of visiting nurses’ death attitudes strongly influenced to self- spirituality, consciousness on connection to afterlife, and how to view focused to life not death. The present findings suggest that it was important the approach to raise awareness of nurses’ death attitudes on “Afterlife belief” and “Life purpose”, lead to improved quality of care that supports the spirituality of the elderly receiving home care.