EUEF teachers validate in Spanish a tool to assess spiritual care competencies in nursing students

For this reason, the EUEF lecturers Tamara Suquet, Lara Martínez and Mar Zulueta; together with Ana Sofía Fernandes, from the Complutense University of Madrid; Rafael Jódar, from CHIS Comillas; and Wilfred Mc Sherry, from Staffordshire Universityof the United Kingdom, have translated and validated the EPICC (Spiritual Care Competency Self-Assessment Tool) for the spiritual care of undergraduate nursing students, the original version of which was in English, into the Spanish context. 

In order to carry out this adaptation, a multicentre study was designed, the method of which was divided into two phases: a first phase focused on translation and linguistic adaptation by means of a panel of experts and pilot testing; and a second phase focused on the evaluation of the structure of the content and its internal reliability. 

This tool has 16 closed-ended questions from 1 to 5, and takes only 10 minutes to answer. 

The results of this study, in which 642 students in the 1st or 4th year of 12 nursing faculties in Madrid took part, revealed that students with previous training in spiritual care obtain better scores, which increase as they advance in their academic training.

Thanks to the incorporation of this tool in nursing training programmes , more humane care is promoted in this branch of healthcare.