REVIEW ARTICLE Role of Religion and Spirituality in Stress Management Among Nurses Chintha Kumari Perera 1 • Rakesh Pandey 1 • Abhay Kumar Srivastava 1 Received: 4 July 2017 / Accepted: 22 May 2018 Ó National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India 2018 Abstract Religion and spirituality play a significant role as coping resources under stressful circumstances. Nursing professionals confront with a variety of stressors repeatedly and are found to employ religious/spiritual coping tech- niques in managing the negative impact of work stress. The present review explores different religious and spiritual coping strategies utilized by nurses of different socio-cul- tural and religious backgrounds and highlights the impor- tance of treating religion and spirituality as two separate entities in studying their stress-buffering effect. The MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, PsycArticles databases and Google Scholar were searched from 2006 to 2017 with the key words nursing, stress, religious coping, religiosity and spirituality. Various notions of the divine/transcendent aspect of life have led to lack of consensus over a func- tional definition of religion as well as spirituality. This is found to be the core element of methodological inadequacy in studying individuals’ reliance on religion and spirituality during stress. Further, most of the existing measures do not adequately explore spirituality as a construct independent of religion. Measures should be more culture sensitive to discover culturally enriched religious practices and rituals adopted by individuals belonging to different socio-cultural milieu to overcome stress. The role of religion and spiri- tuality in stress resilience, emotion regulation and burnout among nurses around the globe needs further empirical support. Multiple levels at which religious and spiritual coping may moderate/mediate the relationship between work stress and behavioral/emotional outcomes among human service personnel who face high emotional labor demands should be more comprehensively analyzed. Keywords Nursing stress Á Spirituality Á Religious coping Á Culture Á Emotional outcomes Introduction Several researchers have found religious coping to be a successful strategy in coping with stress. Religious beliefs of an individual are crucial because religion extends sup- port in understanding and interpreting the stressors. ‘This process facilitates individuals’ search for meaning by offering possibilities to achieve a sense of mastery and control when confronted with events that exceed their own coping resources’ (Pargament, 1997). Hence, religious coping can be defined as the degree to which an individual depends upon and utilizes his or her religious beliefs and practices to cope with and to adapt to stressful circum- stances, and to alleviate negative consequences of stress (Koenig, McCullough, & Larson, 2001; Pargament, 1997). Although a close relationship exists between religion and coping, it remained relatively disregarded by contemporary psychological researchers until recently (Pargament & Raiya, 2007). However, modern-day stress researchers display a growing concern in exploring techniques of religious coping and their implications in enhancing well- being among nurses and other healthcare workers. Nursing is identified as an occupation with high levels of stress. Over the last decade, nurses have reported the highest level of job stress consistently among all the healthcare professionals (Fonseka & Neto 2014; Najimi, Goudarzi, & Sharifirad, 2012). In an investigation con- ducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Chintha Kumari Perera chintha05@yahoo.co.in 1 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005, India 123 Psychol Stud https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-018-0454-x