The role of spirituality in the wellbeing of community health care workers at Temba Community Development Services

Abstract

The research focused on employee wellness and explored and described the role of spirituality in the wellbeing of CHCWs of HIV/AIDS patients. It was important to determine how CHCWs dealt with the stress of caregiving, due to the increasing number of HIV infections and burden on government resources. The approach was a phenomenological qualitative study using faceto- face interviews to collect data from a purposive sample of eight CHCWs from a population of 250 at Temba. The audio-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed for emerging themes using thematic analyses. The research findings provided evidence that spirituality impacted positively on the wellbeing of the CHCWs by providing the coping mechanism to deal with stress. The conclusions drawn were that personal and organisational wellbeing operated at an optimal level due to the influence of spirituality. Recommendations were that formalised spiritual programmes were offered as a tool to equip CHCWs in their duties.