Spiritual care competency and its relationship with clinical self-efficacy in nursing students

Background Spiritual care occupies a special place in holistic care and improving the quality of services provided to patients. The component of clinical self-efficacy is recognized as a prerequisite for clinical capacity and competency. The current study determined the level of spiritual care competency and its relationship with clinical self-efficacy in nursing students.Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted on 194 nursing students studying in medical sciences universities in Yazd, Iran, who were selected by convenient sampling. Data collection tools were a spiritual care competency scale and nursing students' clinical self-efficacy questionnaire. The gleaned data were analyzed by SPSS20 using descriptive and inferential statistics.Results The mean scores of spiritual care competency and clinical self-efficacy of students were 70.29 +/- 9.58 and 102.40 +/- 21.57, respectively. The results of Pearson's correlation coefficient test showed that clinical self-efficacy had a positive significant correlation with spiritual care competency (p = 0.04, r = 0.14). The mean score of spiritual care competency was higher in female students (71.10 +/- 9.81) than male students (67.50 +/- 8.23) with a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05). The regression test results suggested that clinical self-efficacy can be considered as a predictor of spiritual care competency.Conclusion The results revealed that spiritual care competency in nursing students was at an average level, and the higher the level of clinical self-efficacy is, the more developed the spiritual care competency will be. Thus, nursing educators and health system managers should pay special attention to improving the clinical self-efficacy of nursing students to develop their spiritual care competency.