Abstract

The nurses' role in praying is not clearly defined. Scientific evidence to guide nurses praying in practice is lacking resulting in inconsistencies as nurses develop individualized strategies from personal frameworks in meeting the patient's spiritual needs. This descriptive study was conducted with a self-selected sample of 2,688 registered nurses licensed with the Florida Board of Nursing to explore nurses' attitudes and perceptions to their role in praying in practice. The four reliable subscales extracted by factor analysis were attitudes to prayer, role perception, relevant activities, and challenges in praying. All subscales showed that nurses hold positive perspectives and support their role in praying. The attitudes to prayer scale showed the highest mean rating in the study. Role perception in patient-initiated praying showed higher approval ratings while role uncertainty was found with nurse-initiated praying. Nurses agreed they had a responsibility for meeting the patients' prayer needs, indicating that prayer should not be limited to the role of the chaplain. The nursing role perception values which include the relevance of prayer for supporting the patient, its benefit in enhancing nurse–patient relationships, and offering to pray was an appropriate behavior for nurses, showed the top associations within the study. The Spearman rho correlations for the role perception values ranged from .40 to .72 with several items. The nurses supported their role in praying even when challenges such as workload responsibilities and differences in faith traditions were explored. Respondents also expressed competence and comfort with praying. The knowledge generated in this study may be conceptually important for nurse leaders and practitioners in guiding the discussion on nurses' role in praying in practice to build the professional identity and collective understanding for this practice.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 27964698; ProQuest document ID: 2407320982. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Sonia H. Wisdom, PhD, MSN, RN, CCRN (Alumnus)

Sigma Membership

Non-member

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Descriptive/Correlational

Research Approach

Quantitative Research

Keywords:

Prayer, Role Modeling Theory, Role Perception, Nurses' Attitudes

Advisor

Susan A. Orshan

Second Advisor

Francine Nelson

Third Advisor

Rebecca Beck-Little

Degree

PhD

Degree Grantor

University of Phoenix

Degree Year

2020

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2021-08-09

Full Text of Presentation

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