Assessment and response to patients' spiritual concerns are crucial components of high-quality supportive care. Better measures of spiritual needs across the cultural spectrum may help direct ...necessary interventions.
The objective of this study was to assess spiritual needs in a racially/ethnically and religiously mixed sample of hematology and oncology outpatients and examine the association between spiritual needs and perception of quality of care and satisfaction with care.
This is an observational study of 727 racially/ethnically and religiously diverse outpatients. Spiritual needs were measured using a validated, 23-item questionnaire, the Spiritual Needs Assessment for Patients. Scales were administered in four languages.
Forty-four percent were white, 13% Hispanic, 25% black, and 14% Asian. English was the primary language for 57%; 59% considered themselves “spiritual but not religious.” At least one spiritual need was reported by 79%. Forty-eight percent were comfortable having their physician inquire about spiritual needs. Compared with English-speaking patients, Russian-speaking patients reported lower spiritual needs (P = 0.003). Patients who considered themselves “spiritual but not religious” (P = 0.006) reported a higher level of spiritual needs. Higher spiritual needs were associated with less satisfaction with care (P = 0.018) and lower perception of quality of care (P = 0.002).
Spiritual needs are common in an ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse cancer patient population but may differ by cultural background. High levels of spiritual need are associated with lower levels of satisfaction and diminished perception of quality of care. Training clinicians to address patients' spiritual concerns, with attention to cultural differences, may improve patients' experiences of care.
Life satisfaction remains a value-based orientation and an important positive dimension of human well-being. Little is known about the relationship of this construct with palliative care patients' ...spiritual needs. This study assesses spiritual needs of palliative care patients and their association with life satisfaction. An exploratory cross-sectional study design was employed. During structured face-to-face interviews, 110 hospitalized palliative care patients responded to the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire (SpNQ) regarding their spiritual needs and the Brief Multidimensional Life Satisfaction Scale (BMLSS) regarding life satisfaction. The patients, generally satisfied with their health and future prospects, showed variations in life satisfaction based on education and family status. Stronger Existential and Inner Peace needs were expressed. Factors such as age, gender, education, family status, and religiosity make a difference in the expression of spiritual needs. Religiosity emerged as the key predictor for Religious, Inner Peace, and Existential needs. Life satisfaction had a very weak negative correlation (-0.207, p < 0.05) with Inner Peace needs. Recommendations include understanding and addressing the spiritual needs of palliative patients and preparing healthcare professionals to address them.
Purpose
Spirituality is one of the protective factors against suicide. However, the spiritual needs (SNs) of people with suicidal ideation (SI) have not yet been properly identified. This study aimed ...to identify the SNs in people with SI.
Methods
This qualitative study was conducted using conventional content analysis with the presence of 29 participants who were selected by purposive sampling method with maximum variation among people with SI, their families, and mental healthcare providers. Data were collected using 32 in-depth semi-structured interviews that lasted an average of 60 min from December 2019 to March 2021 in mental health service centers for hospitalized and outpatients in Karaj and Tehran in Iran, a religious country. Interviews were analyzed using the content analysis method.
Results
The SNs of people with SI from a total of 643 extracted codes were revealed in the form of 11 subcategories and four categories, including “the need to purpose and meaning in life,” “the need to develop self-awareness,” “the need to love and belonging,” and “the need to support and coaching.”
Conclusion
This study showed that people with SI have various SNs that identifying and meeting these needs, along with increasing the quality of comprehensive care, may reduce suicide attempts.
Nurses’ response to spiritual needs of cancer patients Zumstein-Shaha, Maya; Ferrell, Betty; Economou, Denice
European journal of oncology nursing : the official journal of European Oncology Nursing Society,
October 2020, 2020-Oct, 2020-10-00, 20201001, Letnik:
48
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In this qualitative study, nurses from the United States of America (USA) and Switzerland were asked to recount their spiritual care experiences with cancer patients and their own responses to their ...patients' spiritual needs. Recent advances in cancer care have highlighted the importance of spirituality and spiritual care as part of quality palliative care from the time of a patient's diagnosis through end of life. Nurses who play an important role in supporting patients, describe their own discomfort when confronting their patients' spiritual needs.
A qualitative survey was used to collect narratives of nurses’ experiences in responding to spiritual care needs (n = 62). The accounts were analyzed using thematic analysis.
Nurses identified patients as having spiritual needs and their own experiences in addressing spirituality or religion. Patients sought meaning in their illness, which, they believed, led to disease acceptance. Nurses reported their patients' struggles with challenging disease situations and their own challenges in addressing patients’ spirituality/religion. With experience, nurses developed ways of talking with patients about spirituality/religion, which profoundly impacted their own lives and resulted in personal growth.
Patients' spirituality was identified by nurses who tried to address patients’ spiritual needs drawing on existing resources. For nurses, supporting patients in their spirituality and finding meaning in the disease situation eventually led to disease acceptance.
•Spirituality is one key dimension of quality patient care.•Nurses have the opportunity to assess spiritual needs and to respond to these needs.•Additional education is needed to prepare nurses to provide spiritual care.
Aims
Guided by the biopsychosocial‐spiritual model, this study aimed to evaluate the spiritual needs of Chinese women with breast cancer and explored factors associated with those spiritual needs.
...Design
This study has a cross‐sectional design.
Methods
This cross‐sectional study involved 228 breast cancer patients in China, between May 2019 and July 2019. Data were collected using the general information form, the Spiritual Needs Scale, the Perceived Social Support Scale and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Data were analysed by Spearman correlation analysis, univariate analysis and multiple linear regression, and a structural equation model (SEM) was constructed by maximum likelihood estimation.
Results
There was a slightly higher average score for spiritual needs. Of the five dimensions of spiritual needs, those with the highest and lowest levels were ‘meaning and purpose’ and ‘relationship with transcendence’ respectively. Religion, time since confirmed diagnosis and education level were related to spiritual needs. The proposed model linking spiritual needs perceived social support, anxiety, and depression revealed a satisfactory fit to the data. Specifically, a higher level of social support predicted lower levels of anxiety and depression, which in turn predicted stronger spiritual needs.
Conclusions
The spiritual needs of breast cancer patients were associated with individual characteristics and psychosocial elements. Patients' spiritual needs should therefore be effectively evaluated, especially the needs of those who are not religious. Furthermore, comprehensive, needs‐tailored interventions that incorporate spiritual, biological, psychological and social support should be formulated.
Impact
Nurses should become more aware of the spiritual needs of breast cancer patients, incorporate a spiritual focus into their care and develop comprehensive needs tailored to their characteristics as well as interventions based on biopsychosocial factors.
Although spirituality has been discussed extensively in the healthcare literature in general in the last twenty years, there is a paucity of speech and language therapy literature related to the ...subject. Spiritual concerns may be brought to the fore and need to be expressed after serious illness. However, following stroke, some patients may present with difficulties in their communication, such as aphasia. This research asks the following research question: what is it like to express your spirituality when you have aphasia?
Eight people with aphasia were interviewed about their spirituality using a phenomenological approach. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a flexible analytic approach, and themes common to several participants were identified.
Participants were able to express ideas of spirituality and life-meaning using a variety of communication methods. Speech and language therapists need to be mindful of their patients' spiritual concerns if therapy is not to become superficial.
Spiritual care has been a growing focus in international healthcare research over the last decades. The approaches to spiritual care are many and derive from many different medical fields and ...different cultural contexts and often remain unknown across healthcare areas. This points to a potential knowledge gap between existing instruments and the knowledge and use of them cross-disciplinarily and cross-culturally, and thus best practice insights are not sufficiently shared. This article contributes to the growing field of spiritual care by providing an overview of the various approaches (henceforth instruments) to assess patients’ spiritual needs in view of improving spiritual care. This was done through a scoping review method. The results of the review were collected and catalogued and presented here as ‘The Catalogue of Spiritual Care Instruments’. The included instruments derive from a wide range of geographical contexts and healthcare areas and are aimed at patients and healthcare professionals alike, clearly showing that spiritual care is a focus in healthcare internationally. However, it also shows the difficulties of defining spiritual care, the importance of local contexts, and the difficulties of cross-cultural validity. The catalogue contains 182 entries and is available as an interactive platform for the further development of spiritual care internationally.
Introduction: Although Muslims constitute nearly one fourth of the global population, many non-Muslims are not familiar with Islam. To address this unique need from such a specific cultural context, ...the present study aimed to examine the spiritual needs and influencing factors of Indonesian Muslims with cancer. Method: A cross-sectional research design with 122 cancer patients was conducted by using the Bahasa-version Spiritual Needs Questionnaire. Results: The degree of spiritual needs was generally high. Religious needs were the strongest aspect, and “praying five times a day” was the highest scoring item. Gender (p = .04), age (p = .01), and duration of being diagnosed with cancer (p = .01) were associated with spiritual needs. Female gender (p = .005) and older age (p < .001) were predictors of spiritual needs. Discussion: As expected to provide cultural-congruent spiritual interventions, nurses could meet Muslim patients’ need to pray five times a day during hospitalization, thus help them manage and endure the illness.
ABSTRACTWe examine how to sensibly integrate spirituality into the care of older adult medical and psychiatric patients from a multi-cultural perspective. First, definitions of spirituality and ...spiritual integration are provided. Second, we examine the logic that justifies spiritual integration, including research that demonstrates an association between religious/spiritual (R/S) involvement and health in older adults and research that indicates widespread spiritual needs in later life and the consequences of addressing or ignoring them. Third, we describe how and when to integrate spirituality into the care of older adults, i.e. taking a spiritual history to identify spiritual needs and then mobilizing resources to meet those needs. Fourth, we examine the consequences of integrating spirituality on the well-being of patients and on the doctor-patient relationship. Finally, we describe boundaries in addressing R/S issues that clinicians should be cautious about violating. Resources will be provided to assist with all of the above.
PDF
