Abstract
The study aims at investigating how nursing staff on a Swedish oncology clinic describes the concept spiritual care and finding out which difficulties they see in providing spiritual care. A definition of the concept is constructed from the result of an earlier study by Strang, Strang & Ternestedt (2002). This definition, together with a questionnaire comprising the operationalization of the aims was handed out to nursing staff at a Swedish oncology clinic. Data was obtained from 46 staff members and analyzed with content analyze. The result shows a broad spectrum of problems associated with giving spiritual care, for example the nursing staff's own relationship to religion, lack of education, bad organisation or other practical problems.
The definition is complemented by the result of this study giving a more precise definition: Spiritual care means making possible/facilitating for the patient, with help of suitable nursing interventions, to express and discuss existential questions and to practise his/her spirituality (which may be done through the practising of a specific religion but also through activities which do not need to be of religious nature). Such suitable nursing interventions are characterized by an ambition to create space for spirituality and/or an atmosphere of humanity and security.