Spiritual care for cardiac patients admitted to coronary care units in Gaza Strip: Cardiac patients’ perception

Abstract

 Heart disease is the leading cause of death among the Palestinian people. Since there is a high correlation between stress and heart disease, preventing and relieving stress become a major concern for this group of patients. One of the approaches to reduce stress is the provision of spiritual care. In spite of its importance, literature reveals not meeting spiritual needs of cardiac patients. Recently more attention is paid to spirituality in health care. As a result, many hospitals in the Western countries started to offer spiritual care to their clients. In Gaza Strip, there is no clear policy about providing spiritual care. Therefore, this study aimed to assess if spiritual care is provided to the hospitalized cardiac patients who live in Gaza Strip and who should provide this care. The design for this study was a cross-sectional design. 279 cardiac patients (response rate of 99.29%) participated in this study. Results revealed that there is a severe shortage of providing spiritual care to cardiac patients and the majority of them (n=159, 57%) preferred that nurses to provide spiritual care to them. As a conclusion, health policy makers need to pay more attention to this group of patients and need to adopt a spiritual care policy into the health care system, which will help to decrease their stress, length of hospitalization, and the cost of treatment. Key words: Spiritual care, cardiac patients, perception