Development of a spiritual care education matrix: Factors facilitating/hindering improvement of spiritual care competency in student nurses and midwives

Spiritual care is a fundamental aspect of caring and compassionate nursing/midwifery practice. However, nurses/midwives consistently report feeling unprepared to provide spiritual care for various reasons. A key reason appears to be the lack of structured spiritual care education in undergraduate nursing/midwifery curricula.

Between 2016 and 2019, the three-year, European EPICC project (‘Enhancing nurses’ and midwives' competence in Providing spiritual care through Innovative education and ‘Compassionate Care’) sought to address gaps in nursing/midwifery competence in spiritual care. A key project output, and the focus of this paper, is the EPICC Gold Standard Matrix for Spiritual Care Education (‘EPICC Matrix’), which depicts the complex array of factors hindering/facilitating the development of nursing/midwifery spiritual care competency. The EPICC project followed two major studies that identified factors contributing to nursing/midwifery spiritual care competency development. This evidence, along with the mixed methods focus of the EPICC project to enable co-projection of its outputs informed the development of the EPICC Matrix.

The EPICC Matrix was considered to represent ‘the cultural, social and political environment in which spiritual care competency develops’ in student nurses/midwives. The EPICC Matrix illustrates spiritual care educational considerations during the process of selecting suitable nursing/midwifery students; through the specific aspects of the teaching and learning environment, the student as a person, and the clinical environment in which spiritual care competency develops; and finally, how the student is assessed as competent in providing spiritual care.

Recent research supports the use of the EPICC Matrix in undergraduate nursing/midwifery curricula and strengthens the case for support of the other EPICC project outputs, including: the EPICC Spiritual Care Education Standard, EPICC Adoption Toolkit, and the continuation of the EPICC Network. Further testing of the EPICC Matrix to determine its relevance in different cultural/professional contexts within and outside of Europe would be welcomed.