Background and Purpose: Spirituality is one of the important aspects of well-being and is an effective factor for human adaptation with chronic diseases. The present study aimed to evaluate spiritual well-being status and investigate its relationship with demographic characteristics of hemodialysis patients.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted in 56 patients (age range: 35-91 years) undergoing hemodialysis in the dialysis center of Ilam, Iran, during 2014. Spiritual well-being was evaluated using Spiritual Well-Being Scale, which is proved to be a reliable and valid instrument.
Results: Findings of this study showed that 10.7% of the patients had high level of spiritual well-being, while 42.9% had low level of spiritual well-being. In addition, mean score of spiritual well-being was higher in patients with
university education, employees, and those with high levels of knowledge, income, and family support (P<0.05).
Conclusion: In the process of health care provision, taking personal characteristics and spiritual aspect of patients into account can help patients to adapt to different stages of their disease and might improve patient compliance to treatment. Spirituality plays an important role in patients’ adaptation to chronic diseases. Therefore, it is mandatory to focus more attention on spiritual health status of patients and empowering health care professionals to enhance patients’ spiritual well-being.