An Interprofessional Educational Approach to Teaching Spiritual Assessment

Abstract

Spirituality is an essential aspect of a patient's health that can and should be integrated into routine health care. Despite recommendations of accrediting organizations such as the Association of American Medical Colleges, the National Association of Social Workers, and the Association of Professional Chaplains, there is little well defined curriculum focusing on interprofessional spiritual assessment. This article explores one program's use of an interprofessional approach in teaching spiritual assessment to students from medicine, social work, and chaplaincy. Learning objectives were adapted from the Association of American Medical Colleges Medical School Objectives Project. Workshop evaluations show that students can learn key concepts of spirituality and the basics of spiritual assessment while developing an understanding and respect for the role of chaplains, social workers, and physicians.

Efficacy of Training Interprofessional Spiritual Care Generalists

“…The rate of improvement in this area compares favorably to comparable interprofessional curricula. 53 The interprofessional enrollment of the PERCS Spiritual Care Generalist workshops mirrors the wide range of clinicians who are involved in palliative care. When clinicians learn how to inquire skillfully about the patient/family's S/R values and beliefs, they are better positioned to offer compatible care options.…”

“…50 Finally, this curriculum provided explicit ethical guidelines for patient-centered spiritual care, often lacking in other workshops. [53][54][55][56] Our strategic goal for this training was to educate a variety of front-line clinicians to function as spiritual care generalists throughout the hospital. Board-certified chaplains are typically a scarce hospital resource.…”

Spiritual Care Education of Health Care Professionals

“…Inter-professional education (IPE) was also implemented to teach different professions, such as social workers and chaplains; also IPE was adopted on students from different professions such as medicine, nursing, chaplaincy and social work [49]. Online learning and interactive simulation modes of teaching were adopted.…”

What do we know about the teaching of religiosity/spirituality in medical undergraduate curricula? An integrative review

“…They also concern include the ability to identify the right moment to address the patients' religious/spiritual issues, in an ethical way appropriate to the clinical context, and not just a protocol formality; they refer to knowing how to conduct a spiritual anamnesis and how to advise in terms of spiritual care, leading to realistic hope, facilitating positive coping, creating opportunities for the integration of health services with the patient religious support network. The results presented here indicate that several medical schools have understood the important of going beyond the theory, providing students with transformative experiences, as for example, by following the work of chaplains (Lennon-Dearing et al 2012).…”

“…In the US, in 92% of the schools that teach S/H (Spirituality and Health) it is taught in the preclinical stage (first two years), however 61% of them also (or only) offer S/H in the clinical stage (Koenig et al 2010). Most American medical schools include the S/R subject during the first and second years (Sandor et al 2006, Perechocky et al 2014Barnett & Fortin 2006;Lennon-Dearing et al 2012), some during the clerkship years (Pelletier & McCall 2005;Feldstein et al 2008) and a few in the fourth year as an elective course. Some schools consider spirituality and religion as elements of multiculturalism, and others as integrative medical practices, including palliative care and/or part of the wellness curriculum (McEvoy et al 2013).…”