Abstract
Background In order to facilitate better international and cross-cultural comparisons of health professionals (HPs) attitudes towards Religiosity and/or Spirituality (R/S) we updated the NERSH Data Pool. Methods We performed both a network search, a citation search and systematic literature searches to find new surveys. Results We found six new surveys (N=1,068), and the complete data pool ended up comprising 7,323 observations, including 4,070 females and 3,253 males. Most physicians (83%, N=3,700) believed that R/S had "some" influence on their patients' health (CI95%) (81.8%-84.2%). Similarly, nurses (94%, N=1,020) shared such a belief (92.5%-95.5%). Across all samples 649 (16%; 14.9%-17.1%) physicians reported to have undergone formal R/S-training, compared with nurses where this was 264 (23%; 20.6%-25.4%). Conclusions Preliminary analysis indicates that HPs believe R/S to be important for patient health but lack formal R/S-training. Findings are discussed. We find the data pool suitable as a base for future cross-cultural comparisons using individual participant data meta-analysis.
Highlights
Preliminary analysis indicates that health professionals (HPs) believe Religiosity and/or Spirituality (R/S) to be important for patient health but lack formal R/S-training
We knew from an earlier query that Baumann and Lee were in possession of survey data from 138 German chaplains using the NERSH Questionnaire from 2012 to 2014, and that their data had been approved to be included into the NERSH Data Pool
The above results and discussion highlight several important prerequisites for this research field, that we argue in favor of the following
Summary
In 2015, our international research collaborative Network of Research in Spirituality and Health (NERSH.org) decided to build a large global data pool of health professionals’ (HPs) religiosity and/or spirituality (R/S) based on two pre-selected questionnaires. The establishment and evolvement of the NERSH collaboration including the NERSH questionnaire have been described elsewhere, as are two prior releases of the data pool.2,3The aim of this article is to 1) report the results of a newly updated network, citation and literature search leading to the 3rd version of the NERSH Data Pool, 2) describe characteristics of the data pool, and descriptive statistics of observations’ demographics, 3) report selected details about the physicians and nurses in the data pool regarding their attitudes towards influence of R/S on patient health, and their degree of training in handling R/S in medicine, and 4) to share ideas for future cross-cultural projects. Migration and population growth continually change the landscapes of cultures and faiths of the world’s countries creating new demands of healthcare systems that historically were developed to function within a single belief system (i.e. Christian Samaritanism etc.) This creates a need for a cross-cultural understanding and adds yet another challenging factor to this research field, requiring the highest levels of data quality and data integrity for us to limit information bias and optimize statistical measurements. Comparing research findings have hitherto been difficult because of limited comparability of study designs and study outcome, as described by Garssen et al in their meta-analysis of R/S and mental health where they had to exclude 100 out of 181 eligible studies based on either methodological issues or incompatible study design or outcome measures These differences are known throughout this research field and have made data pooling less feasible. Opportunities are missed and statistical analyses of greater precision are left unexplored
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