Nurses’ spiritual attitudes and involvement—Validation of the Polish version of the Spiritual Attitude and Involvement List

Abstract

Background Spirituality is vital in the holistic approach to nursing care. The personal spirituality of nurses has been documented to have an impact on the spiritual nursing care they provide. Aim To validate the Polish version of the Spiritual Attitude and Involvement List (SAIL) among nurses and to describe spiritual attitudes and involvement of nurses as measured with the tool. Design A cross-sectional, validation study was performed according to the STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology guidelines. Methods Study involving 163 nurses, with the use of four tools: (a) the SAIL; (b) the Self-Description Questionnaire; (c) the Scale of Spiritual Transcendence; and (d) the Brief Religious Coping questionnaire. Results The Explanatory Factor Analysis identified six factors and 25 items were retained explaining a total variance of 67.96%. In the Confirmative Factor Analysis, acceptable index fit values were obtained. Correlations were found between SAIL and the Brief Religious Coping questionnaire, the Self-Description Questionnaire, and the Spiritual Transcendence Scale. Nurses reported the highest scores on ‘Meaningfulness’ (= 4.95 out of 6.0, Standard Deviation [SD] 0.56) and the lowest on the ‘Transcendent Experiences’ factor (= 3.21 out of 6.0, SD 0.93). A strong correlation was found between ‘Spiritual Activities’ and the religious.