Many studies on spiritual care in palliative care are performed in the US, leaving other continents unexplored. The objective of this systematic review is to map the recent studies on spiritual care in palliative care in Europe. PubMed, CINAHL, ATLA, PsycINFO, ERIC, IBSS, Web of Science, EMBASE, and other databases were searched. Included were European studies published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2015, 2016, or 2017. The characteristics of the included studies were analyzed and a narrative synthesis of the extracted data was performed. 53 articles were included. Spiritual care was seen as attention for spirituality, presence, empowerment, and bringing peace. It implied creative, narrative, and ritual work. Though several studies reported positive effects of spiritual care, like the easing of discomfort, the evidence for spiritual care is low. Requirements for implementation of spiritual care in (palliative) care were: Developing spiritual competency, including self-reflection, and visibility of spirituality and spiritual care, which are required from spiritual counselors that they participated in existing organizational structures. This study has provided insight into spiritual care in palliative care in Europe. Future studies are necessary to develop appropriate patient outcomes and to investigate the effects of spiritual care more fully.

Although knowledge on spiritual care provision in an interfaith context is essential for addressing the diversity of patients’ religious and spiritual needs, an overview of the literature is lacking. Therefore, this article reviews the empirical literature on interfaith spiritual care (ISC) in professional caring relationships. A systematic search in electronic databases was conducted to identify empirical studies published after 2000. Twenty-two studies were included. The quality of the included studies was assessed, and their results were thematically analyzed. The majority were conducted in North America, mainly using qualitative methods and focusing on professional caregivers, who had a variety of professional and spiritual backgrounds. Two core categories were identified: (1) normativity: reasons for (not) wanting to provide ISC, in which universalist and particularist approaches were identified; and (2) capacity: reasons for (not) being able to provide ISC, which included the competences that health care professionals may need when providing ISC, as well as contextual possibilities and restraints. This systematic review identifies gaps in the literature and indicates that future studies have to explore patient perspectives on ISC.

This study aims to rethink the integration of spiritual care into healthcare in spiritually plural societies. Based on a systematic review of the theoretical literature, we analysed 74 studies and distinguish four positions regarding the integration of spiritual care into healthcare: generalist-particularists who see the spiritual domain as a field to be addressed by all professional caregivers and in which caregivers' own spiritual orientations play a vital role; generalist-universalists who advocate for all caregivers to provide spiritual care regardless of their spiritual orientations; specialist-particularists who argue that experts should address the spiritual domain in light of their own spiritual orientations; and specialist-universalists who call for experts to provide spiritual care regardless of their spiritual orientations. We argue that these four positions give different weight to the professional, personal, and confessional roles of the spiritual caregiver. Acknowledging these positions is a prerequisite for future scenarios of integrating spiritual care into healthcare.

No abstract