Spirituality in nursing professionals working in critical health care settings: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Introduction

Spirituality, recognized as an essential aspect of nursing care, contributes to well-being and resilience in critical care settings. Its integration into practice strengthens the meaning and sense of meaning and purpose in the lives of nursing professionals.

Objective

To systematically review the evidence on spirituality among nursing professionals working in critical healthcare settings.

Methodology

A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted following the PRISMA guidelines. The protocol was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42023371984). Searches were performed from inception to april 2024 in the following databases: Medline/PubMed, Embase, Lilacs, Cochrane CENTRAL, and Web of Science. The meta-analysis of individual means was performed using a random-effects model. Untransformed means (MRAW) were used to estimate the 95% confidence intervals of individual studies, while the I² and tau² statistics assessed heterogeneity.

Results

A total of 1175 studies were identified, 34 of which were included in the systematic review and 4 in the meta-analysis. A prevalence of 58,8% was observed in non-experimental quantitative studies, with “spirituality education and meeting spiritual needs” being the main theme. Meta-analyses were conducted on studies using scales to assess spirituality levels, particularly the Spiritual Care Competence Scale (SCCS), which showed the best performance with an MRAW of 98,56 (IC 95%: 97,86; 99,25; I²: 0,0%), indicating a moderate level of competence in spiritual care.

Conclusions

The findings highlight the importance of spirituality in professional performance in critical care settings, emerging as a key component for promoting well-being by strengthening resilience in the face of caregiving challenges.