Abstract
Background. The Aim of this study was to investigate predictability of general health based on the level of spiritual health and empathy in nurses. Different dimensions of health have an interactive relationship with one another. In recent years an explosion of studies emphasizes on spiritual health. A nurse’s relationship with spiritual dimension of Him/herself has grave impact on the quality of care he/she provides. Empathy reduces nurses job burnout and at the same time reduces patient’s distress. We aimed to determine their roles in general health.
Methods. The descriptive research method was correlation type. The research sample included 175 nurses of Tabriz city, Iran, in 2023 and it was carried out by a convenience sampling method. Data were collected through General health questionnaire (GHQ), Spiritual well-being scale (SWBS) and Davis empathy scale. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation coefficient and enter regression.
Results. The findings of the research show that there is a significant relationship between empathy and General health of nurses. We also found a significant relationship between spiritual health and general health. Existential health to some extent can predict general health better than spiritual health. In empathy and general health female nurses had higher score than males.
Conclusion. This study focused on empathy and spiritual health and their effect on general health. According to the finding of this study general health are predicted based on Spiritual health and empathy. This means that the more empathy and spiritual health the nurses have, the lower is the level of their physical symptoms, anxiety, depression and social dysfunction.
Practical implications. the finding of this study can be applied for prevention of job burnout in nurses. Due to nature of spiritual health that can be learned we can teach nurses to cultivate their spiritual health and monitor their job burnout via empathy. Hence it could be used in teaching empathy to nurses and improve their academic curriculum.