Social Workers Orientations Towards the Use of Spiritual Practices in Professional Interventions with Cancer Patients

Abstract

The most recent achievement of social work is perhaps the spiritual and religious aspect in the components of service that the expression of spiritual diversity has become an integral part of the social personality system in almost all cases. This study aims at highlighting the attitudes of social workers towards the use of spiritual practices in their interventions with cancer patients. It also highlights the importance of social services provided to cancer patients, which may lead to their acquisition of a scientific, social and spiritual culture that helps them to accept the disease while ensuring that treatment procedures are followed. This study is applied to a group of social workers consisting of (30) social workers working in Port Said governorate hospitals in the oncology departments, with an arithmetic average for their ages (50.7) and a standard deviation (3.8). The results of this study determine the most important attitudes of social workers towards the importance of spiritual practices in professional interventions with cancer patients, and their attitudes towards interest in spiritual practices in professional interventions with them. The results also identify the most important obstacles to spiritual practices with the patients, and suggest some proposals to activate these spiritual practices in the professional interventions of social workers with their patients. This study suggests the need for training programs for the social workers in the field of oncology on spiritual practices in their professional interventions as a main component of spiritual and religious care within the services provided to cancer patients.