Abstract:

The spiritual care given by the nurses has an important place in the recovery of the illness and the development of the health of the individuals. To provide appropriate spiritual care, nurses must have good therapeutic communication skills. The educational processes of nursing students are extremely important in gaining knowledge about spiritual care and therapeutic communication. This research is a cross-sectional, descriptive/ correlational study conducted to examine the relationship between nursing students’ therapeutic communication skills and spiritual care competencies. The study sample consisted of nursing department students of a state university (n=468). The data were collected with the introductory information form, Therapeutic Communication Skills Scale for Nursing Students, and the Turkish version of the Spiritual Care Competence Scale. As a result of our research, it has been determined that nursing students have average level non-therapeutic and high-level therapeutic communication skills, and their spiritual care competence is above average. In addition, it was determined that there was a negative relationship between students’ non-therapeutic communication skills and spiritual care competencies and a positive relationship between therapeutic communication skills and spiritual care competencies. It is recommended to include a course on spiritual care and therapeutic communication skills in the curriculum of the nursing department, with case studies and further research on the subject.

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