Children’s student nurses’ knowledge of spirituality and its implications for educational practice

Children’s nurse educators have to rely predominantly on adult-based literature to guide their educational practice concerning spirituality in the nursing curriculum. The aim of this study was to get a children’s nursing perspective. A questionnaire was designed around the main themes emerging from the adult literature on spirituality. This was distributed to children’s nurses on the undergraduate curriculum at a UK university. The results showed that some of the challenges of delivering spirituality are common to both adult and children’s nursing. However, there were also significant differences revolving around the impact that children and families had in informing students’ understanding of spirituality, and the problems of seeking a unified theory of spirituality in a children’s nursing context. It concludes that children’s nursing has important lessons to learn from the adult literature; however, it must strive to construct its own insights and use this understanding to inform educational approaches to the topic.