Spirituality and General Health among Hospital Personnel of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd-Iran

Given the importance of spirituality and health as well as activities done by hospital personnel, the aim of present study is to evaluate the relationship between spirituality and general health and to assess some possible affecting factors such as demographic and work factors on these variables in hospital staff. This cross-sectional study was done on hospital employees of Yazd Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences. First, 101 hospital staff were selected randomly by using multistage sampling. General Health, spiritual experience and demographic questionnaires as reported by the subjects themselves, were completed. Cut-off point of 23 was considered for general health, So that those, whose score were 23 or less, were considered as healthy individuals. Collected data were entered software SPSS (Ver.19) and then analyzed using Pearson correlation, t-test and ANOVA tests. Mean and standard deviation of spirituality was 251.50 and 42.30 and for general health was 46.79 and 10.82, respectively. Spirituality and general health had a significant negative correlation (p-value=0.03). Spirituality was significantly higher in subjects who were single (p-value=0.04). Men (P-Value=0.01) and those older than 33 years (P-Value=0.001), had significantly better general health. General health significantly associated with service location (P-Value ≤ 0.0001). The study finding shows, increase in spirituality is associated with higher levels of general health. Given that the general health score in this study were higher than the cut-off 23, and physical and mental health of hospital staff is associated with their quality of service at work, so promotion of general health and spirituality in hospitals, which are responsible for public health, is essential.