Effectiveness of the Educational Intervention on Spiritual Health among Midwifery Students Using Iranian Comprehensive Questionnaire

Midwives' competency to spiritual care is important for improving the health of the mother and infant. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of educational intervention on the level of spiritual health among midwifery students.

This quasi-experimental study was carried out with a pretest-posttest design on 56 undergraduate midwifery students studying at Karaj universities in the academic year of 2017-18. Sampling was done by convenience method and comprehensive spiritual health questionnaire for Iranian populations was used to collect data. The group educational sessions were theoretically held within 16 hours. Mean, standard deviation, Friedman and Wilcoxon nonparametric tests were used to data analysis by applying SPSS 19 software.

The mean and rank score of participants’ spiritual health (in all three structures of insight, affection and behavior) increased significantly after educational intervention immediately, and one month after intervention (p<0.0001). The highest score of spiritual health was obtained immediately after intervention, and there was no significant difference between the scores immediately and one month after intervention (p=0.655, p=0.851). There was no significant relation between the age, academic mean and term of the participants with the mean score difference of spiritual health (p>0.05). Ethical Considerations: Following the explanation of the research goal and confidentiality of information, oral consent of the participants was obtained.

The findings indicate on the effectiveness of educational intervention on spiritual health of the studied students. Thus, inclusion of spiritual health and care education in the education curriculum of midwifery students is recommended