An integrative review of defining characteristic of the nursing diagnosis "spiritual distress".

This is a review of 21 articles, not a study of patients, and it does not test whether any characteristic accurately diagnoses spiritual distress or improves care. The included studies had many different designs, so the researchers could not use a standard quality score and did not exclude articles based on rigour and relevance ratings. Most included studies were in cancer patients, so the findings may not apply to other populations. The search was limited to English and Persian articles published between January 2010 and December 2020. MESH did not include spiritual distress. The authors note that the categorisation used was removed in NANDA-I 2021-2023, and that some characteristics overlap with anxiety and frustration. The review proposes 41 additional criteria, but these were not clinically validated in this paper.

The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was supported by Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, and the funder had no role in design, writing, data collection or analysis.

Do not treat the 74 criteria as a validated diagnostic checklist. The review synthesised 21 articles with different designs and did not test whether these features accurately distinguish spiritual distress from anxiety, frustration or other diagnoses, or whether acting on them improves patient outcomes.