Abstract
The concept of spirituality is increasingly emphasized in today's healthcare services. Beliefs and values play an important role in patients’ perceptions of health, illness, and death. It’s a matter of fact that the spiritual values of patients differ from culture to culture. Keeping that in mind, the aim of this study is to determine the levels of religious disposition, empathy, and intercultural sensitivity in undergraduate students of theology and nursing departments and to reveal if there is a relationship between these variables. After graduating, theology and nursing students have the potential to become spiritual counselors and guides or nurses, professions which involve intense contact with the spiritual worlds of patients. For this purpose, we have reached 532 students continuing their undergraduate education in a Faculty of Theology and a Department of Nursing. Research data were obtained through a survey consisting of a Personal Information Form, a Brief Religiosity Scale, an Empathic Tendency Scale, and an Intercultural Sensitivity Scale. The data were subjected to statistical analysis by means of a package program called IBM SPSS Statistics 24. According to our findings, there is a statistically significant correlation between religiosity, empathic disposition and intercultural sensitivity. A statistically significant positive relationship was also found between empathic tendency and intercultural sensitivity. A statistically significant difference was found in empathic tendency scores by gender. A statistically significant difference was found in religiosity, empathic tendency and intercultural sensitivity scores according to the faculty of education.