Can Spirituality be Taught to Health Care Professionals?

Abstract

Although people with life-limiting conditions report a desire to have spiritual concerns addressed, there is evidence that these issues are often avoided by health care professionals in palliative care. This study reports on the longitudinal outcomes of four workshops purpose-designed to improve the spiritual knowledge and confidence of 120 palliative care staff in Australia. Findings revealed significant increases in Spirituality, Spiritual Care, Personalised Care, and Confidence in this field immediately following the workshops. Improvements in Spiritual Care and Confidence were maintained 3 month later, with Confidence continuing to grow. These findings suggest that attendance at a custom-designed workshop can significantly improve knowledge and confidence to provide spiritual care.

Efficacy of Training Interprofessional Spiritual Care Generalists

“…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.…”

Evidence-based spiritual care

“…Two studies reflected the experience of physicians: one focused on residents in family medicine [49], and the other focused on palliative care physicians [50]. Four addressed interdisciplinary care teams: palliative care staff [51,52], medical directors and chaplains [53], multifaceted organizational perspective (nurses, patients, family, chaplains, and hospital administrators) [54]. One study focused both on nurses' educational outcomes from a training session, as well as patient outcomes [55].…”

“…A common theme throughout the literature was a call for training and education in spiritual care giving; two studies examined the experience of students learning spiritual care giving using qualitative inquiry methods [35,47]; nine were conducted pertaining to the efficacy of such training [30,31,39,41,43,48,49,52,55]. Educational sessions were found to be effective in clarifying what spirituality is, increasing care givers' confidence in providing spiritual care, and providing a context for care givers to examine their own spirituality.…”

A Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study of Occupational Therapy Students’ Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Spirituality and Spiritual Care in Occupational Therapy Education

“…There is a need for healthcare professionals to increase their knowledge and confidence in addressing spiritual issues as part of healthcare services (Meredith et al 2012). Therefore, research has shown that spirituality has been a neglected aspect of education which appears to be a concern within spheres of interest in healthcare education and continues to evolve based on societal needs (Webster 2003;Borneman 2011;Morris 2013;Morris et al 2012;Puchalski 2001Puchalski , 2006King and Crisp 2005).…”