Integrating spirituality into undergraduate nursing curricula.

Nursing programs have done a commendable job keeping pace with the rapid advances in disease management. Yet, spirituality has received far less attention in nursing curricula (Keefe, 2005) and nursing students often do not have a strong foundation in this area. The purpose of this project was to integrate spirituality into the undergraduate nursing curricula and measure student outcomes related to spiritual knowledge and attitudes. Nursing faculty participated in a spirituality education program and followed this with sessions focused on integration of spiritual content into individual nursing courses. Student pre and post-tests were administered using a standard instrument to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. Significant differences in spirituality knowledge and attitudes among senior-level nursing students (t = -3.059, p = .004) were revealed. As the healthcare system becomes increasingly complex, providing students with tools to identify and strengthen inner resources is essential to patient care.