Enhancing nurses’ and midwives’ competence in providing spiritual care through innovative education and compassionate care (EPICC)

About this project

• Centre for Health and Development (CHAD)

The project set out to address the findings through previous resesarch that pre-registration nurses and midwives don’t feel adequately prepared for spiritual aspects of care. This type of care can encompass the holistic understanding of patient needs when faced with life-changing events or sadness, and the providing of caring qualities such as warmth, compassion and empathy.

Gaps and inconsistencies in pre-registration nursing and midwifery education relating to a person’s spiritual and cultural world views, beliefs and practices as well the potential range of emotional responses had also been been identified by research. Therefore, the project team have been leading the debate on the provision of spiritual care and developing a standard approach to training and practical application in nursing and midwifery.

The methodology has been to produce a set of educational standards, reached by a process of collective thought and discussion. These are:

• The EPICC spiritual care education standard - a set of four competencies expected from undergraduate nursing and midwifery students that will be used in the assessment of training.
• A toolkit for education and practice.
• A Gold Standard Matrix for Spiritual Care Education

EPICC is working to become a recognised mark for training quality in spiritual care, and a worldwide network of nursing and midwifery educators has been established which will continue to share knowledge, experiences and resources in spiritual care that can be applied to nursing and midwifery education in higher education institutions.

You can find the project outputs and details of the EPICC Network and how to join at the EPICC Network website.

Spiritual care training to become part of Welsh nursing curriculum press release

Co-funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ Programme (Erasmus+ KA2 Grant Agreement Number: 2016-1-UK01-KA203-024467)

University of Malta

University of South Wales, UK

Christian University of Applied Sciences (VIAA), Netherlands

VID, Norway

• van Leeuwen, Rene, Attard, Josephine, Ross, Linda, BOUGHEY, Adam, Giske, Tove, Kleiven, Tormod and MCSHERRY, Wilfred (2020) The development of a consensus‐based spiritual care education standard for undergraduate nursing and midwifery students: An educational mixed methods study. Journal Of Advanced Nursing. ISSN 1365-2648 )
• Ross, Linda, MCSHERRY, Wilfred, Giske, Tove, van Leeuwen, René, Schep-Akkerman, Annemiek, Koslander, Tiburtius, Hall, Jenny, Steenfeldt, Vibeke Østergaard and Jarvis, Paul (2018) Nursing and midwifery students' perceptions of spirituality, spiritual care, and spiritual care competency: A prospective, longitudinal, correlational European study. Nurse education today, 67. pp. 64-71. ISSN 1532-2793 )
• Ross, Linda, Giske, Tove, van Leeuwen, (René), Baldacchino, Donia, MCSHERRY, Wilfred, Narayanasmay, Aru, Jarvis, Paul and Schep-Akkerman, Annemiek (2016) Factors contributing to student nurses'/midwives' perceived competencynin spiritual care. Nurse Education Today, 36. pp. 445-451. ISSN 0260-6917 )
• Ross, L, van Leeuwen, R, Baldacchino, D, Giske,, T, MCSHERRY, Wilfred, Narayanasamy, A, Downes,, C, Jarvis,, P and Schep-Akkerman, A (2014) Student nurses perceptions of spirituality and competence in delivering spiritual care: A European pilot study. Nurse Education Today, 34 (5). pp. 697-702. ISSN 1532-2793 )