An integrative review of spiritual assessment: implications for nursing management

Abstract

The issues to emerge from this paper are (1) that spiritual assessment is an increasingly important issue for nursing practice, (2) that the range of reliable and valid quantitative instruments for use in clinical practice is limited, (3) that there is overlap in the domains and categories of spirituality identified by quantitative and qualitative researchers, and (4) that nurse managers seeking to introduce spiritual assessment will do so in the context of a professional debate about the relevance of spirituality to contemporary practice.

Effects of Nurses' Screening of Spiritual Needs of Hospitalized Patients on Consultation and Perceived Nurses' Support and Patients' Spiritual Well-being

“…4,19,38,48,49 Every known spiritual needs assessment instrument was (much) more elaborate than necessary for our purposes. We finally decided to take the 2 spiritual questions from the Dutch Distress Thermometer as our starting point.…”

“…4,6,19,[37][38][39][40] At the same time, various studies indicate that patients themselves report that attention for spirituality in their medical history is important. 3,26,37 In spite of the existing attention for a spiritual needs assessment, no research-that we could find-has been conducted into its effects.…”

“…17 And so there have been calls from different countries and related cultures to include spiritual care in nursing practice. 8,18,19 As a result, spiritual care by nurses has been incorporated in many professional nursing codes as part of nursing care. [20][21][22] Despite the evidence-based arguments in favor of spiritual care provision by nurses, spiritual care proves to be a problematic element in nursing practice.…”

Literature Review on Spiritual Care in Nursing

“…Rather than nurses, Draper suggests that a generic model of the FICA [7,8] should be used to initially screen the spiritual status of patients [6], and that spiritual needs of patients should be further assessed according to four categories: 1) meaning, purpose, and hope; 2) relationship with God; 3) spiritual practice, religious obligation, and interpersonal connection; and 4) professional staff interactions [9,10].…”

“…Draper conducted an integrative review of spiritual assessment and identified three categories: generic, quantitative [6], and qualitative approaches and conducted a metasynthesis of all approaches. The author recommends that spiritual assessment should start from a generic model such as the FICA model [7,8].…”