Spirituality in Health Assessment
The human essence could not be completely defined without taking in consideration the beliefs and ways to see the world, and its unexplainable events, that each civilization has set since the beginning of history. This idea of giving purpose and a concrete meaning to self-existence, and the natural phenomena is what has shaped the current cultures and societies on which nurses are required to extend their care. The purpose of this paper is to provide a definition to spirituality and religion, as well as reflect in the author’s and client approach of them, and linking these experiences to nursing care.
Spirituality and Religion
These two concepts are often confused when referring to one’s own approach of the divine or superior power. Although the definition of these two aspects arise from the personal experience of each person, and therefore, might have a subjective character, there are components that can be shared throughout these different conceptions. In general terms, spirituality can be described as the experiences and phenomena involving the personal quest to create meaning and answers to life, existence, and purpose, and might not necessary be linked to a religion (Barber, 2012). Spirituality then can be understood as the personal experience of the divine, and how the relationship is lived by the subject. On the other hand, religion is presented as an organized or institutionalized system of beliefs, rituals, practices, and shared dogmas, with a given name and identifiable group of
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As a result, the author recognizes that the values involved in her spirituality will influence her actions and guide her decisions such as those regarding nursing care. For example, concepts such as respect, patience, honesty, and unconditional love for the neighbor are present when caring for another human
As a nursing student, this assignment helped the author realize how important it is to understand a patient’s spirituality. The author believes that nurses should assess the spiritual values of patients in order to understand what the patient and family is going through in terms of how they view their health, illness, and expectations from healthcare staff. Nurses should remain
The Bravewell Collaborative. (2015). Spirituality and Religion in Health Care. Retrieved from www.bravewell.org/integrative_medicine/philosophical_foundation/spirituality_and_healthcare/ Curry, K. (n.d.). A Biblical Worldview of Health Care. Retrieved from http://www.hcic.org.au/sites/default/files/imce/Biblical%20Worldview.pdf Mcskimming, S., & Puchalski, C. M. (2006, May).
Although this might be helpful in order for us to deliver a holistic nursing care, it should be noted that spirituality is broader than religion. The term religion tends to refer to a more socially organised and structure ways of being spiritual. It provides deep traditions of spiritual practices such as in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism,
First, Pesut uses the arrangement of her ideas to appeal to the audience’s intellect. The article is arranged through deductive reasoning from broad to more specific, as she first describes the religious cultural context and finishes by suggesting ways to improve individual spiritual care in practice. Pesut states that she will arrange her ideas this way in her article: “I will begin by discussing the context that has created barriers to nursing theorizing about religious care. I will then suggest that this neglect of religious theory has produced a spirituality theory-religious theory gap (…) I will then conclude with three recommendations for integrating theory about religious care into nursing education which complements the teaching of
America is a melting pot of many religions and nurses are called upon to practice cultural competencey. This paper focuses awareness of other religions in order to practice culturally competent end of life of care for all patients. Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism’s end of life rituals and traditions, stance on organ donation, embalmment, autopsies, after death care will be briefly discussed in order to establish nursing implications for the religions mentioned above to educate nurses in order to practice cultural competency at the highest level. All humans, regardless of religion, nationality, and ethics have the right to desired end of life care and should be treated with respect. Nurses are asked to visit their own beliefs and be able to separate their own personal views with those of their clients.
Spirituality is defined in several ways as it pertains to different worldviews. Today we will look at the worldview as it relates to Pluralism, Scientism and Postmodernism.
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.
Spirituality and religion hold different values and truths depending on your personal beliefs. Being religious is a belief or practice that contains certain values one should follow. When looking deeper into religion you can find spirituality which is the part of religion that effects our spirit and soul, it is not tangible. “The Sacred within” is spirituality and pertains to God dwelling inside of our heart and soul. When looking at “the sacred within” there are certain senses that we can tap into so, we may obtain that sort of spirituality. Through solitude, silence, imagination, and nature, we can have a better sense of spirituality.
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.
As defined in work by Zyga (2015), the term spirituality refers to “a sense of purpose, a sense of ‘connectedness’ – to self, others, nature or ‘God’…the sense that there is more to life than the material or practical, and those activities that give meaning and value to people’s lives.”
From the beginning of human existence, religion and spirituality have played immense, critical roles in the lives of people and the functionings of our society. In our world today, the conflict in religious forces combined with the conflict in spiritual forces depict both our confusion and our yearning to connect with divine forces and influence the people around us for good. Organized Religion and spirituality both provide their own unique, important influences and opportunities to individuals and our society. Each have their own set of benefits and detriments and analyzing these are growingly essential to our world because people choose to participate in one or the other or both and
Walker and Avant’s concept analysis model was used to analyze the concept of spiritual care to provide an inclusive definition of the spiritual care in nursing. The concept analysis was done based on Jean Watson’s caring theory. According to Watson spiritual care is the core of nursing care. Spirituality is a critical component in nursing to provide holistic care to the patient. Even though the increasing awareness of spiritual care present, such care is lacking in nursing (Ramezani et al., 2014).
Personal definitions of health and health can be strongly influenced by cultural. It is, therefore, imperative for nurses to understand the patient’s view of health in order to comprehend the needs for healing.
Even though the increasing awareness of spiritual are present, such care is lacking in nursing. In this study, a concept analysis was performed to provide an inclusive definition of spiritual care concept in nursing, which encompasses the first and second step of selection of concept and aim of the concept. The study data was collected through the National and International online database. The third step is identifying all uses of concept, in which all concepts of spiritual care was reviewed. For an example, Florence Nightingale and Watson considered spiritual care as the core of nursing care. According to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, spiritual care is a prerequisite for quality care. Attributes separate a concept from other surrounding concept and provide an insight about the interest of the concept. Seven defining attributes were identified in this step such as healing presence, therapeutic use of self, intuitive sense, meaning-centered therapeutic intervention, and exploration of the spiritual perspective, Patient-centeredness and creation of a spiritually nurturing environment. The fifth step of model case identification was done by
The Bible states; “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to be with you always,” (John 14:16 New International Version). God has provided Angel’s to the people of the Earth to guide and protect them from harm, in turn so too must nurses act as “Guardian Angels” to their patients. As a nurse, providing care in a culturally diverse community, nurses should avoid inflicting of the nurse's own Christian values and affirm human dignity and show respect for the values and practices related with different cultures and use approaches to care that reflect awareness and responsiveness.