Finding spirituality and nursing presence: the student's challenge.

The concepts of spirituality and nursing presence are difficult for nursing students to comprehend, identify, and apply. Yet holistic nursing practice obligates nurse educators to teach students about these abstract concepts. The purpose of this article is to describe a nursing faculty's approach to encourage baccalaureate students to explore and develop an understanding of the concepts of spirituality and nursing presence in light of their clinical practice. A clinical placement in a faith-based community crisis center for the poor and homeless is part of a semester-long, psychiatric/mental health clinical course. At the crisis-center day shelter, students (N = 188) develop an interactive advocacy relationship with the clients and witness both spiritual care and nursing presence. Seminar-driven, topic-focused discussions foster reflective thinking application of these difficult concepts. Without exception, the students affirm that this is an experience of self-discovery and maturation in understanding spirituality and nursing presence in nursing practice.