How emotional contagion shapes spiritual care competence: Insights from a cross-sectional study on intensive care nurses.

Background: Intensive care units (ICUs) are environments where nurses are open to emotional interactions because of complex structures and dynamic relationships. Nurses' susceptibility to emotional contagion and their spiritual care competence may affect the quality of care by influencing their ability to manage and respond to the emotional dynamics present in these environments.

Aim: This study aimed to determine the level of emotional contagion and spiritual care competence in intensive care nurses.

Study design: This study is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted with 199 nurses working in the ICUs of a training and research hospital in Turkey. The data were collected between December 2021 and June 2022 using the Emotional Contagion Scale (ECS) and the Spiritual Care Competence Scale (SCCS).

Results: The mean score of the nurses was 50.29 ± 15.36 on the ECS and 90.29 ± 29.53 on the SCCS. A statistically significant difference was found between the ECS and SCCS and gender, marital status, weekly working hours and some approaches about spiritual care (p < .05). It was determined that there was a statistically significant positive correlation between the total scales and sub-dimensions of the ECS and SCCS (p < .05). In this study, it was found that intensive care nurses' susceptibility to emotional contagion was high, and that their spiritual care competence was at a moderate level. The results show that gender, marital status, weekly working hours, type of ICU and some approaches about spiritual care are crucial factors in nurses' emotional contagion and spiritual care competence. In addition, as the intensive care nurses' susceptibility to emotional contagion increased, their spiritual care competence also increased.

Conclusions: The results of this study will guide the planning of interventions to protect intensive care nurses from the negative effects of emotional contagion and increase their spiritual care competence.

Relevance to clinical practice: It is necessary to protect intensive care nurses from the negative effects of emotional contagion and to increase their competences in spiritual care.