Administering a two-stage spiritual assessment in healthcare settings: a necessary component of ethical and effective care

Abstract

As key members of the healthcare team, nurse managers are ideally situated to ensure that all patients receive a spiritual assessment as a routine component of care. In so doing, they help ensure the provision of ethical and effective care to the diverse spiritual groups that will continue to populate the UK for the foreseeable future.

The role of spirituality in spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation: exploring health professional perspectives

“…A second approach could be the introduction of a structured spiritual needs assessment. A plethora of such assessment tools and approaches are available for use within health [33,34]. However, as McSherry and Ross [35] suggest, some caution is required.…”

Spiritual Diversity, Spiritual Assessment, and Māori End-of-Life Perspectives: Attaining Ka Ea

“…Finally, while many patients do not maintain spiritual or religious beliefs, many prefer health care professionals to ask about their views (Ernecoff et al 2015). A spiritual assessment differentiates the kind of spiritual needs a patient may hold, if any, and helps craft a response sensitive to need (Hodge 2015;Nelson-Becker et al 2015). This includes sensitivity to varied cultural customs and worldviews.…”

Spirituality in Psychiatric Nursing: A Concept Analysis

“…Leaving spirituality unaddressed can take the form of failing to assess for spirituality and/or failing to address issues once identified. Omitting either can lead to negative patient experiences, such as decreased patient satisfaction and poor clinical outcomes (Hodge, 2015). Failure to address spirituality in psychiatric nursing may have negative effects for nurses as well.…”

“…Authors define spirituality, in contrast, as a personal connection to the sacred, transcendent, or higher power (Koenig, 2012). Spirituality refers to an individual's search for a transcendent power that for some people can be expressed in the communal form of religion (Hodge, 2015). In psychiatric nursing, where the focus of care is often less on physical health and more on the other aspects of health (mental, emotional, social), studies about spiritual care have concentrated on how open patients are to receiving that care and how comfortable nurses are in giving it, but there has been no clear exposition of what constitutes the concept of spirituality for psychiatric nursing.…”