Spirituality in the Healthcare Setting
Spirituality is the act of seeking meaning, purpose, and transcendence about self and other people. Spirituality is expressed through beliefs, practices, and traditions. There are three main components of spirituality. These include transcendence, connectedness to a higher power, and meaning of life. However, spirituality is individualized depending on the individual’s culture and view of the world (Cosentino et al., 2020). On the other hand, health is defined as the state of stability in the physiological, physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of a human being. From this definition, it is justifiable to state that spirituality is an important concept of health and greatly affects one’s status of health. Besides, spirituality has been associated with health and well-being benefits, including tolerance to physical and emotional stress. This lowers anxiety and pain as well as the risk of depression and suicide since spirituality gives one meaning to life (Cosentino et al., 2020).
Spirituality has been embedded in the provision of care, where patients have been observed to benefit from spiritual care, which facilitates rapid recovery as well as reduced levels of spiritual distress. Notably, if a patient’s spiritual needs are not met, there is an increased risk of adverse psychological outcomes, subsequently leading to reduced quality of life. For this reason, it is evident enough to say that spirituality impacts the health of individuals in a significant way. Accordingly, good spiritual health helps create a good psychological environment for a healing process as well as a patient’s decision-making. Since nurses spend most of their time close to patients, they are in an ideal position to provide spiritual care to patients (Cosentino et al., 2020).
However, it has been noted that nurses lack consistency in the provision of spiritual care. This is attributed to many reasons, including the lack of time to offer spiritual care, inadequate skills to handle a patient’s spirituality, and misconception of spirituality with religiosity among the nurses (Taylor, 2020).
Different approaches to an initial assessment of the spirituality of patients are discussed below. To assess the spirituality of a patient, it is important that nurses consider five parameters of spiritual assessment. To begin with, the nurse should understand that spirituality differs from religiosity. Secondly, the nurse should be able to identify the spiritual anguish in their patient. Thirdly, the nurse should remember that spiritual assessment is a continuous process and should be done during interactions, not only during the first day. Fourthly, the nurse should know the different ways to assess spirituality in addition to the verbal responses patients provide in response to given questions. Lastly, nurses should use these assessments for therapeutic enhancement (Taylor, 2020). One way to assess a patient’s spirituality includes conducting interviews with the patient, where the healthcare professional engages in a physical talk with the patient and asks open-ended questions to let them express their concerns in matters regarding their spirituality. Secondly, questionnaires may be used where the patient responds by writing to answer a formulated set of questions. Finally, observation of the patient is another approach to assessing spirituality (Taylor, 2020).
Despite having many options in spiritual assessment, my preferred method is FICA (faith, importance/influence, community, and address/action). This is a structured set of questions that is easy to use on patients during an interview. During such an interview, I would observe the principles of communication, such as the sitting arrangement and posture, maintaining eye contact with the patient and leaning forward to signify interest in what the patient is saying, and paying optimal attention to the non-verbal communication of the patient as they respond to questions. As supported by Henry and Gilley (2024), I would also use open-ended questions to allow the patient to express all their concerns in the spiritual world.
During the interview, I would ask the patient the following questions: “Do you feel like spirituality exists? Do you have spiritual beliefs, practices, and values you observe in your daily interactions? How have spiritual beliefs impacted your life in terms of decision-making, seeking health care, and stress-coping techniques? Which is your spiritual community, and how does it support you? Are these people important to you? Lastly, I would ask, “What do you think should be done to improve your spirituality and overall health?
Spiritual assessment is not a one-day thing and would require a certain period to observe the patient’s behavior and interaction with others regarding spirituality. For this reason, I would use observation for two weeks to capture the patient’s pattern of expressing spirituality as well as their psychological prognosis. I would pay attention to the patient’s attitude about life, whether they value their life and that of others, whether they believe in the existence of a high being, and how they interact with others (National Center for Biotechnology, 2019).
In the healthcare sector, nurses encounter patients looking for spiritual meaning to help them explain their health conditions. Therefore, it is important to include spiritual care training for nurses to ensure holistic care is available for the patients and delivered to them professionally. That way, the overall quality of healthcare services will improve and increase the effectiveness of the therapeutic interactions with the patient and eventually meet the ultimate goal of increasing quality of life.
References
Cosentino, C., Harrad, R. A., Sulla, F., Bertuol, M., Sarli, L., & Artioli, G. (2020). Nursing spiritual assessment instruments in adult patients: a narrative literature review. Acta Bio Medica : Atenei Parmensis, 91(Suppl 12), e2020015. https://doi.org/10.23750/abm.v91i12-S.10998
Henry, N. L., & Gilley, N. (2024). Spiritual assessment. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK599554/
National Center for Biotechnology. (2019). Motivational interviewing as a counseling style. In www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK571068/
Taylor, E. J. (2020). Initial spiritual screening and assessment: Five things to remember. The Korean Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care, 23(1), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.14475/
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Question 
Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade.
2. In your textbook, Physical Examination & Health Assessment, review the “Religion and Spirituality” section of Chapter 2 (pp. 15-21) and “Cultural and Spiritual Assessment in the Elderly” (pp. 833-834).
3. Access the media Spiritual Considerations to complete an interactive case study.
4. Prepare to discuss the following prompts:
Spiritualiaty in the Healthcare Setting
a. What is your current method of assessment of spiritual needs in your patients? How do patients respond to the assessment?
b. Using an example from your experience, with HIPAA standards in mind, discuss how you have seen spiritual considerations impact the health of a patient.
c. Review a minimum of two scholarly sources regarding spiritual assessment and develop a list of 4 questions you can
incorporate into your practice to assess spiritual influences on the health of your patient. OCLS resources are preferred sources and can be accessed through IWU Resources. Wikipedia is not permitted, as it is not a peer-reviewed, scholarly
source.
5. Whether written or spoken, interactions are expected to:
a. clearly and thoroughly address the prompt with meaningful information that shows critical thinking.
b. introduce your ideas and questions to add greater depth to the discussion, rather than restating what your classmates have shared. (Include much more than “Great post,” or “I agree.”)
c. refer to relevant course concepts as you discuss your learning together.
d. develop insightful conversation by directly addressing your classmates’ ideas.
e. demonstrate professionalism.
6. Based on your educational setting, complete tasks in the instructions below.