Care matters: spiritual care by nurses from feminist perspectives
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Date
11/2005Author
Grosvenor, Dorothy
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Abstract
The importance of spiritual care by nurses for health and recovery has become
increasingly topical in the last decade. However, there is little research into why
nurses should give spiritual care. Whilst bodily caring has always been associated
with nurses and nursing, spiritual care has been seen as the concern of religious
ministers. The steady decline of people belonging to conventional religions in secular
British society is paralleled by an upsurge of interest in spiritualities. But why nurses
should give spiritual care is unclear. This qualitative, interdisciplinary study aims to
explore why nurses are asked to give spiritual care to patients by considering whether
there is something amiss with nursing care that would be remedied by the addition of
spiritual care. To investigate this, spiritualities and bodily caring are considered in
tension with each other. By using feminist standpoint epistemological approaches I
propose to: a) allow the everyday experiences of nurses in giving nursing care to be
expressed; b) demonstrate that themes of nursing care as comforting, compassionate
caring challenge claims that the addition of spiritual care is necessary; c) show that
nurses conform to the perverse body/spirit dualisms of dominant patriarchal
institutions and cultural norms in describing bodily nursing care as spiritual and d)
present living models of nurses and nursing care as meaningful materialist world
views.
Material for the study was obtained in semi-structured, one-to-one conversational
interviews with eighteen experienced practising nurses. Stories of nursing care were
interpreted and analysed within nursing theories of spiritual care as either imperative
or integral to nursing care. Body/spirit critiques in feminist informed theologies
provided a further theoretical framework for analysis.
The thesis describes the everyday distress that nurses experience. The feminist design
created a vehicle for fresh constructs of care by nurses not previously identified in
studies of spiritual care by nurses. The findings provide an evidence base for
practising nurses to validate their own skills; for managers and policy makers in
planning support for nurses to give nursing care, as well as for chaplains and others to
listen and respond to care matters.