Essay On Spiritual Assessment

I have spent the majority of my career in the ED and have recently transitioned into a management role so it has been years since I performed a spiritual assessment. However, while working on the inpatient unit, I can recall performing spiritual assessments as a part of the admission assessment. Far less detailed that the FICA spiritual assessment, the basic assessment included the patient’s religious preference, religious commitment scoring, and desire for a Chaplain during their hospital stay. Spiritual assessments relay the individual’s spiritual life history, allowing practitioners to gain multidimensional insight into family dynamics and spiritual framework (Hodge, 2001).

This article, developing a Spiritual Assessment Toolbox: A Discussion of the Strengths and Limitations of Five Different Assessment Methods, discusses and reviews a variety of assessment methods developed to examine the spiritual lives of clients. According to Hodge (2005), “…for service provision to be as effective as possible, spiritual beliefs and practices often have to be taken into account (p. 314).” Because a client’s spiritual worldview is often a guiding principle for their lives, it is important to use an assessment method that takes this into account. This article looks at five different methods for this purpose: (1) spiritual histories, (2) spiritual lifemaps, (3) the spiritual

Evidence has linked a strong relationship between spirituality and medicine. There is a positive correlation between a patient’s spirituality or religious commitment and health outcomes. A spiritual assessment as a part of a health assessment is a practical step to incorporating patient’s spiritual needs into practice. The FICA Tool and HOPE Questions provide serve to assist clinicians in the spiritual assessment process. By examining the research done using these tools, it has been determined that the FICA Tool is easy to use and provides basic data on a patient’s spirituality. The FICA tool is both reliable and valid. The HOPE Questions are

In providing basic health care in hospitals, medical practitioners should not only focus on giving physical treatment to patients but also provide spiritual and psychological assessment and management for them. This practice as suggested by many studies (see Chapman, 2003; Eberst, n.d.,) can help the hospitals develop a new method of healing that is more holistic in approach. The Joint Commission (2005) recommends spiritual assessment program which can help the medical officers to know the needs of the patients aside from the usual physical treatment. It will help them

A spiritual and psychological inventory can be useful in helping someone to determine their current state of wellness. Kathleen Dowling Singh (2000) talks about how a spiritual assessment is helpful when people are close to dying as they begin to honestly and urgently examine their lives. Singh (2000) also suggests that regardless of how much time we have left to live, answering the questions in a spiritual inventory will help provide direction to our lives. The following questions were developed for this purpose and were used for an interview, the responses from the interview follows in Appendix A.

Spiritual beliefs contribute tremendously in how a person perceives the world and what occurs in their personal lives, including their health. A spiritual assessment tool is often utilized by healthcare personal to evaluate the spiritual needs of the patient. Healthcare personal interview patients, typically on admission, in-order to gather the information required for a spiritual assessment tool.

Some barriers that may inhibit one’s ability to complete a spiritual assessment are: poor timing, lack of training, discomfort with the subject matter (patient or provider), provider’s uncertainty of own spirituality, concepts of spirituality differ among all, and a lack of clues and/or cues by the patient that may open the doors to initiate a genuine conversation (Dameron, 2005; Joint Commission, 2005). It is important the health care provider maintains a non-judgmental approach and must be careful not to impose his or her

Hi Amalia, I am very impressed the way you give importance to the compassionate listening while doing assessment .As you mention active empathetic listening enhance the open communication between the patient and listener. Lack of time ,lack of experience of the health professional, difficulty in identifying who wanted to discuss spiritual issues, and a belief that spiritual assessment not our part of responsibility are the most common barriers to the spiritual assessment (Saguil & Phelps, 2012). Spiritual assessment often provide direction for healthcare professionals interested in a more holistic approach to patient well-being. The heart of spiritual care is empathetic presence (Knight, n.d.). Empathetic presence involves many skills and components

The article “The Practice of the Ministry of Medicine” by Dr. Margaret Mohrmann was written to share real life stories of patients struggling with diseases. The article “Spiritual struggle and affective symptoms among geriatric mood disordered patients” by David H. Rosmarin, Mary C. Malloy and Brent P. Forester was written to explain the medical approach on spiritual care for patients. Therefore, these articles show the difference between emotional and unemotional language while discussing healing a person.

1.The spiritual-needs assessment tool should include a minimum of five questions that can either be answered by the patient and/or by your observation of the patient. The information can be presented in a Word document, in a table, or in questionnaire format.

Because each hospital organization has different philosophies, this means that the organizations spiritual assessment will vary depending on the organization. This is a serious problem for the patient. Appropriately addressing patients spiritually can promote health, decrease depression, help patients cope with a difficult illness, and even improve outcomes for some patients. While TJC mandates that all patients are provided a spiritual assessment as a part of their hospital encounter, TJC should also mandate all hospitals conduct the same spiritual assessment on every patient.

Spirituality is a delicate topic, and some may not be open to talking about their beliefs. Spirituality is generally understood to be an essential aspect of being human (Lyndo-Lam, 2012). Assessing the spiritual needs of patients is a key component in the nursing process. A compassionate and thoughtful nurse can make a patient feel more secure, making it easier for him to express his spirituality. The participation of both patient and health care provider is vital in promoting spiritual health. The main focus of a spiritual assessment is to gather information regarding the patient’s spiritual needs in order incorporate them into the plan of care, so as to treat

This journal article states that most of the people, who are spiritually active, are more concern about their mental well-being. While we experience no difficulty in working cooperatively with doctors, teachers and instructors, or lawyers as required for our clients, we should now add ministry and religious leader to this list and understand to work with them. This

In my personal standpoint, I believe the spiritual care involves an attempt to establish a kind connection with the patients to know their personal history, their values, their religious beliefs and their spiritual needs. All of this can be encircled in a complete nursing assessment that incorporates the spiritual assessment of the patients. I agree with the lecture that sometimes the care of the spiritual needs can be made with a gentle service to be the companion of those in suffering or the attentive listening of their stories. In a Christian model, the spiritual care is focused on encouraging the patients to organize their beliefs with the objective to rebuild their damaged interaction with God (Miller, 2006). I believe some patients recall

Thanks for answering my posed question. When working with a client, it is important to understand the client’s spiritual, religious, or faith belief systems spirituality because an individual’s spirituality and religious beliefs do play a part in helping them to cope with their illnesses. Spirituality is described as a way to find meaning and inner peace in one’s life. People can find spirituality through such things as religion, music, art or in nature. Spirituality is represented in a person’s values, principles, and worldview.