Aims and objectives: To map existing evidence about educational interventions or strategies in nursing and allied healthcare concerning students’ and staffs’ spiritual care provision.Background: Spiritual care is an important part of whole person care, but healthcare staff lack competence and awareness of spiritual issues in practice. To rectify this, it is important to identify what educational approaches are most helpful in supporting them to provide spiritual care.Design: A scoping review using the PRISMA‐ScR checklist.Method: Searches in the databases CINAHL, MEDLINE, ATLA and ERIC were conducted for papers spanning January 2009–May 2020. Search terms were related to spirituality, spiritual care, education and clinical teaching. Appraisal tools were used.Results: From the 2128 potentially relevant papers, 36 were included. The studies were from 15 different countries and involved nurses, physicians and other health‐related professions, and both quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods were used. The results are presented in three themes: Understanding of spirituality, Strategies in educational settings, and Strategies in practice settings. The review points to great diversity in the content, lengths and setting of the educational interventions or strategies.Conclusions: Courses in spiritual care should be implemented in curricula in both undergraduate and postgraduate education, and several studies suggest it should be mandatory. Courses should also be available for healthcare staff to raise awareness and to encourage the integration of spiritual care into their everyday practice. There is a need for greater consensus about how spirituality and spiritual care are described in healthcare settings.Relevance to clinical practice: Spiritual care must be included both in monodisciplinary and multidisciplinary educational settings. The main result of spiritual care courses is in building awareness of spiritual issues and self‐awareness. To ensure the provision of spiritual care for patients in healthcare practices, continuing and multidisciplinary education is recommended.

Aims and objectives: To develop and psychometrically test a self‐assessment tool that measures undergraduate nursing and midwifery students’ perceptions of spiritual care competence in health care practice.Background: Spiritual care is part of nurses/midwives’ responsibility. There is a need to better benchmark students’ competency development in spiritual care through their education. The EPICC Spiritual Care Education Standard served as groundwork for the development of the EPICC Spiritual Care Competency Self‐Assessment Tool.Design: Cross sectional, mixed methods design. A STROBE checklist was used.Methods: The Tool (available in English, Dutch and Norwegian) was developed by an international group. It was tested between July–October 2020 with a convenience sample of 323 nursing/midwifery students at eight universities in five countries. The Tool was tested for validity using Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, one‐way ANOVA and independent samples t test. The reliability was tested by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis.Results: The KMO test for sampling adequacy was 0.90. All, but two, items were related to the same factor. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the Tool was 0.91. Students found the Tool easy to use, and they gained new insights by completing it. However, students felt that some questions were repetitive and took time to complete.Conclusions: The Tool has construct and discriminant validity, and high internal consistency (is reliable). In addition, students found the Tool useful, especially in early stages of education.Relevance to clinical practice: The Tool affords student nurses and midwives the opportunity to self‐evaluate their knowledge, skills and attitudes about spirituality and spiritual care. The Tool offers students, educators and preceptors in clinical practice a tangible way of discussing and evaluating spiritual care competency.

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.

Spiritual care is part of holistic nursing. However, nurses have reported that their education does not sufficiently prepare them for spiritual care in practice. Few studies have reported students' perspectives on how they acquire skills and knowledge in spiritual care. The aim of the study was to explore how first year nursing students experienced a compulsory assignment that asked them to carry out a conversation with someone about spiritual aspects of nursing care and to reflect about it in relation to nursing. The study was a qualitative content analysis of students' reflective logs. This research analysed the reflective logs of 385 (76%) first year nursing students from one religious and one secular university in Norway. The logs were written in response to an assignment based on Stoll's assessment guide, which asked them to carry out a conversation about spiritual aspects of nursing care. Analysis yielded three main categories that characterised students' experience of this assignment: meeting oneself, beyond one's comfort zone and discovering the other. Students brought few skills and little experience in spiritual care into their education, and they felt that spiritual care conversations were personal and outside of their comfort zone. It is challenging for nursing education to equip nursing students with the competence in spiritual care necessary to meet the standard set out by the International Council of Nursing.