Spiritual health, clinical practice stress, depressive tendency and health-promoting behaviours among nursing students.
OBJECTIVE
This paper is a report of an exploration of the association of spiritual health with clinical practice stress, depressive tendency and health-promoting behaviours among nursing students.


BACKGROUND
Several studies in western countries have demonstrated an association between spirituality and health. Spirituality-related research in eastern countries, however, is still in its infancy.


METHODS
A cross-sectional design was adopted and structured questionnaires were used for data collection. We adopted the Probability Proportional to Size cluster sampling method to recruit nursing students in senior grades. Data were collected in 2005 using the Spiritual Health Scale, Perceived Clinical Practice Stress Scale, Beck Depression Inventory-II and Health Promotion Behaviours Scale.


RESULTS
A total of 1276 nursing students with an average age of 20.1 years (sd = 1.6 years) participated in the study. Spiritual health was negatively associated with clinical practice stress (r = -0.211, P < 0.001) and depressive tendency (r = -0.324, P < 0.001) and positively associated with health-promoting behaviours (r = 0.611, P < 0.001). Using hierarchical regression analysis to control for demographic factors, spiritual health was found to be an important predictive factor for clinical practice stress, depressive tendency and health-promoting behaviours.


CONCLUSIONS
These results are consistent with research findings from western countries. Educators should develop strategies to address nursing students' spiritual health. This may help nursing students to manage their stress, to reduce depressive symptoms and to enhance health-promoting behaviours.
Hsiao
Ya-Chu
YC
Department of Nursing, Chang Gung Institute of Technology, Taoyuan, Taiwan. yjshiao@gw.cgit.edu.tw
Chien
Li-Yu
LY
Wu
Li-Yu
LY
Chiang
Chih-Ming
CM
Huang
Song-Yuan
SY
D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006293:Health Promotion; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D013140:Spiritualism; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000209:etiology*; D013338:Students, Nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult