Teaching spiritual care in Portuguese nursing schools

Spiritual care is an essential dimension of holistic care. Organizations, such as the International Council of Nurses, mention the importance of spirituality for health and the urgency of nurses providing spiritual care. At the same time, studies show that spirituality brings benefts at the level of coping strategies both in crisis or struggling experiences, greater gratitude, facilitating forgiveness and meaning of life. However, spirituality and spiritual care seem to have been neglected and, among other factors, the lack of training in the nursing degree has been described as critical. The undergraduate nursing degree in Portugal should ensure scientifc, technical, human, and cultural training for of providing and managing general nursing care. As so, the undergraduate degree should provide the conditions to learn about spiritual care based on a holistic approach to patients, families, and communities. The school curriculum and respective syllabuses are not random, and the choice of diferent curricular units results from refexive and intentional processes in each institution. Materials and methods An exploratory study was conducted to map the explicit reference of spiritual care in the undergraduate nursing degree in all nursing schools in Portugal. Data were collected in September 2022 by searching for the spiritual* research term in the designation of the undergraduate nursing degree curricular units as displayed on the websites of the higher education institutions (HEI). Results Of the 36 HEI, none had curricular units entitled with spirituality or spiritual care. Conclusions Although it cannot be inferred that spiritual care is not addressed in the undergraduate nursing degree, as the curriculum is a form of social visibility of a discipline and a profession, these data should lead us to refect on the (in)visibility that is given to the spiritual dimension. So further studies are needed to disclose and understand how students are prepared to attend to patients in a holistic paradigm that includes attention to the spiritual dimension of health.