Making Health Care Whole: Integrating Spirituality Into Patient Care

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

Alvord uses her personal experiences of working as a Navajo surgeon to teach her readers the philosophies her people follow to heal. Her philosophy is that instead of looking at each patient as a mechanical system with each part separate, look at their mind, body and spirit as being connected. If one can do this, patient care will improve. She also touches upon being culturally competent in the work place by knowing your patient population’s beliefs on healing and health care. After reading her story, I believe that in order to be the best health care provider one must look into the spiritual aspects of their patients’ lives. As providers we must provide care using the biopsychosocial model of care and become knowledgeable on our patients beliefs. Like Alvord states within her story, we must walk in beauty, become harmoniously connected to those around us, and care for our patients in a positive

Spirituality has been in and out of healthcare and has proven effective every time that it is used. Implementing spirituality into healthcare allows for faster recovery times, better interpersonal relationships with their healthcare providers, and a more holistic approach to healthcare. Several approaches to analyzing it have proven it to be effective but is often not taught when educating future nurses. Through the barriers and the controversy spirituality remains as an important aspect of a patient’s recovery process.

In this paper I will be discussing the role of the chaplain in the health care system, importance of collaboration between chaplains and health care professionals, discussion on ethics, and the roles that spirituality, culture and religion play in positive health outcomes. The occupation of a chaplain comes with many different roles. Their duties include comforting, listening, and being a guide as patients travel through a world of emotions. Here in the U.S. health care chaplains play a big role in providing spiritual care and support for patients. Referring back to the mini lecture on religion and health. Spiritual assessment and care are being integrated into patient care plans. Health care organizations are starting to see that when there is a lack of understanding of patient religious or cultural needs that the quality of care decreases.

The article concerned itself with describing five spiritual assessment methods that may be used in a client-practitioner setting. Hodge (2005), thought it important to discuss these tools, because when hospitalized adults were surveyed, regarding the role of spirituality in their treatment, they responded that spirituality was an important coping mechanism that aided in keeping them going (40%). When asked how they coped with their illnesses, 43% immediately indicated that they saw spirituality was an important factor in helping them do so (Hodge, 2005, p. 322).

Religious beliefs provide structure for people who are facing illnesses and seeking health, during time of crisis. The health care industry is rapidly responding to the ever-changing population through continued education. Health care works are faced with multiple dilemmas that require thought and fast-acting decisions. Challenges of providing medical treatment to people of different religious backgrounds may be altered. All members of the health care team need to address the issues and concerns regarding specific health care practices and religious beliefs and remove their perspective from the situation. The following paper will discuss three different religions while incorporating a comparison of beliefs, perspective on healing and

Many may believe that one’s spirituality and religion does not coexist with the efforts to provide beyond satisfactory care in the healthcare field, but they’re wrong. To provide the patient with extraordinary care it is inevitable to understand their religious and spiritual beliefs. This ensures the patient a versatile environment that they feel comfortable in. It is essential as healthcare providers to understand how spirituality and religion may play a role in the patients’ health assessment process.

Exploring the Phenomenon of Spiritual Care Between Hospital Chaplains and Hospital Based Healthcare Providers, written by Janie J. Taylor, Jennifer L. Hodgson, Irina Kolobova, Angela L. Lamson, Natalia Sira, and David Musick is a study conducted using hospital chaplains (HCs) and hospital-based healthcare providers (HBHPs) to discover their collective experiences with individualized spiritual care services. At the completion of the study, the researchers consolidated the collected data into six areas of focus: awareness of chaplain availability, chaplains focus on building relationships with providers and staff, chaplains are integrated in varying degrees on certain hospital units; chaplains meet providers’ personal and professional needs; providers appreciate chaplains; and barriers to expanding hospital chaplains’ services (Taylor et al., 2015, p. 96).

For this research anaylsis I continued to look into how spirituality and religion impacts the patient care given by nurses. Spirituality is something I feel is essential to their life because the mind, body, and soul are one and when one is not balanced another part is supposed to help to balance everything out the best it can.

Recognizing medical spirituality as a distinct interdisciplinary field of interest, with its own well-developed body of clinical evidence, clinical skill,

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” (Campbell, n.d.). Spirituality has many definitions, for many people of different ages, genders religions and cultural backgrounds, having spirituality has proven to improve quality of life and patient outcomes. The concept of spirituality, clarification of its meaning, in addition to its influence on patient outcomes will be explored using Walker and Avant’s Concept Analysis Method (2012) The aim of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of how patients, nurses and people from all religions and cultures understand the concept of ‘spirituality’.

Incorporating religion and spiritually is an important part of providing culturally competent care (Sherman et al., 2015). Given the

My definition of spiritual care starts within and nourishing own’s faith and beliefs. With these attitudes come along being open-minded, nonjudgmental and respectful to others especially to my patient. People have different points of view in life, definition of religion or spirituality in various meaning, and expressing emotions in million ways. In times of needing to strengthen anyone’s faith and spirituality, everyone should be at most humble and supportive manners. There are many instances when my patient needed someone to just listen to them especially when bad news was just told by their physician. One recent example, my patient came in for a routine checkup with her cardiologist and suddenly end up in our unit needing an open-heart surgery

We have chosen this topic in specific to explore on the role of religious beliefs in the medical decision making, and the importance of caregivers not to assume homogeneity among their patients since religious beliefs is considered as an integral component of a patient’s holistic healthcare.[1]

The PICOT statement: (Population) In critical care patients in acute care units. (Intervention) The nurse’s role as a primary member of the patient-centered care is to include spirituality into the care of the patient and exploring the patient’s spirituality. (Comparison) The nurse’s role to just give the patient standard care without including any type of spirituality within their treatment plan. (Outcome) When the nurse includes spirituality within their patient’s treatment it can improve the patient’s outlook on their care and their choice of their treatment. This statement is very important to the nursing profession because including spirituality within the care of the patient is something that is avoided because many people do not understand spirituality or know the thin line that comes with it. It is important to include spirituality because of the impact it is has the patient’s outlook of their treatment, how they look at their self, and how they handle their care all together. Spirituality is something that is vital to the patient because the patient needs to have a positive outlook when everything does not seem positive.