N-ECCO Grant Spiritual needs of patients with inflammatory bowel disease and their caregivers: a European cross-sectional nursing study

Abstract

Abstract Aims Spirituality is the search for meaning or purpose in life (Delgado, 2005), not strictly from a religious perspective. Spiritual well-being is positively connected with physical and psychic well-being, and achieving the first is likely to help to maintain the latter (Bożek et al., 2020). Individuals with chronic disorders or experiencing a life-changing condition (e.g. Inflammatory Bowel Disease - IBD), may have gone through a spiritual quest of some sort that can produce spiritual anguish or 'spiritual distress', interpreting the disease as a punishment, feeling as a victim of 'superior injustice', losing faith in prayer (Klimasiński et al., 2022), but data on the spiritual needs (SpNs) of IBD patients are lacking. The main objective of this project is to describe the SpNs of IBD patients to provide information to IBD nurses on how to address these needs. Methods A multilingual cross-sectional electronic survey will be carried on assessing the SpNs of patients using the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire (SpNQ). The tool is made up of items assessing the importance attributed by patients to SpNs using a 4-point Likert scale (Büssing et al., 2010), and is available in ten European languages, but it could be translated and validated in other European languages inside the project in case of anticipated participation by a country that need the questionnaire available in the local language if a collaboration with IBD clinicians and patients in that country will be possible. Anticipated Impact The findings of such a study can provide better consideration of SpNs in the treatment of IBD patients, emphasizing the importance of addressing SpNs for IBD nurses in managing IBD patients, adopting the tools to screen patients for these needs; furthermore, the results of this project can provide additional evidence of the importance of nursing in IBD patients’ care.