This book provides an accessible comprehensive exploration of phenomenological theory and research methods and is geared specifically to the needs of therapists and other health care professionals. ...An accessible exploration of an increasingly popular qualitative research methodologyExplains phenomenological concepts and how they are applied to different stages of the research process and to topics relevant to therapy practiceProvides practical examples throughout
Because of cancer is generally perceived as a life-threatening illness, patients often develop spiritual needs upon the diagnosis. Spirituality impacts patient quality of life (QoL) and provides a ...context in which to derive hope and meaning to cope with illness. The goal of this review is to give an overview of the most relevant studies with a focus on the relationship between spiritual well being, QoL and hope in patients with cancer, in addition to exploring the importance of spiritual issues both for patients and healthcare professionals.
Spiritual well being with its dimensions of faith, meaning, and peace is a central component for the overall QoL. A strong spiritual well being decreases symptom severity, the level of hopelessness and the desire for hastened death in cancer patients. However, in the medical setting the provision of spiritual care remains poor, although patients, especially at the end of life, would like their spiritual needs to be addressed as part of the global care.
Care for cancer patients goes beyond just caring for the person's body. The assessment of spiritual/religious needs can be considered the first step in designing needs-tailored interventions.
Although spiritual care is a basic element of holistic nursing, nurses' spiritual care knowledge and abilities are often unable to satisfy patients' spiritual care needs. Therefore, nurses are in ...urgent need of relevant training to enhance their abilities to provide patients with spiritual care.
A nonrandomized controlled trial.
To establish a spiritual care training protocol and verify its effectiveness.
This study recruited 92 nurses at a cancer treatment hospital in a single province via voluntary sign-up. The nurses were divided into two groups-the study group (45 people) and the control (wait-listed) group (47 people)-using a coin-toss method. The study group received one spiritual care group training session every six months based on their routine nursing education; this training chiefly consisted of lectures by experts, group interventions, clinical practice, and case sharing. The control group participated in monthly nursing education sessions organized by the hospital for 12 continuous months.
After 12 months of intervention, the nurses in the study group had significantly higher overall spiritual health and spiritual care competency scores as well as significantly higher scores on all individual dimensions compared with those in the control group (P < 0.01).
A spiritual care training protocol for nurses based on the concept of mutual growth with patients enhances nurses' spiritual well-being and spiritual care competencies.
Iconic images of medieval pilgrims, such as Chaucer's making their laborious way to Canterbury, conjure a distant time when faith was the only refuge of the ill and infirm, and thousands traveled ...great distances to pray for healing. Why, then, in an age of advanced biotechnology and medicine, do millions still go on pilgrimages? Why do journeys to important religious shrines-such as Lourdes, Compostela, Fátima, and Medjugorje-constitute a major industry? InMiracle Cures, Robert A. Scott explores these provocative questions and finds that pilgrimage continues to offer answers for many. Its benefits can range from a demonstrable improvement in health to complete recovery. Using research in biomedical and behavioral science, Scott examines accounts of miracle cures at medieval, early modern, and contemporary shrines. He inquires into the power of relics, apparitions, and the transformative nature of sacred journeying and shines new light on the roles belief, hope, and emotion can play in healing.
In contemporary Turkey-a democratic, secular, and predominantly Muslim nation-the religious healer is a controversial figure. Attracting widespread condemnation, religious healers are derided as ...exploiters of the sick and vulnerable, discredited forms of Islamic and medical authority, and superstitious relics of a pre-modern era. Yet all sorts of people, and not just the desperately ill, continue to seek them out. After years of research with healers and their patients in working-class neighborhoods of urban Turkey, anthropologist Christopher Dole concludes that the religious healer should be regarded not as an exception to Turkey's secular modern development but as one of its defining figures.Healing Secular Lifedemonstrates that religious healing and secularism in fact have a set of common stakes in the ordering of lives and the remaking of worlds.
Linking the history of medical reforms and scientific literacy campaigns to contemporary efforts of Qur'anic healers to treat people afflicted by spirits and living saints through whom deceased political leaders speak,Healing Secular Lifeapproaches stories of healing and being healed as settings for examining the everyday social intimacies of secular political rule. This ethnography of loss, care, and politics reveals not only that the authority of the religious healer is deeply embedded within the history of secular modern reform in Turkey but also that personal narratives of suffering and affliction are inseparable from the story of a nation seeking to recover from the violence of its own secular past.
What does human enhancement technology (HET) and artificial intelligence (AI) have to do with religion? This book explores, specifically, the intersection of HET and AI with spiritual health, ...Christianity, and ethics. The exploration strengthens an emergent, robust body of publications about human enhancement ethics. What does it mean to make us “better” must also address the potential spiritual implications. Concern for spiritual health promises to make the study of religion and human enhancement ethics increasingly pressing in the public sphere. Some of the most significant possible and probable spiritual impacts of HET and AI are probed. Topics include warfare, robots, chatbots, moral bioenhancement, spiritual psychotherapy, superintelligence, ecology, fasting, and psychedelics. Two sections comprise this book: one addresses spirituality in relation to HETs and AI, and one addresses Christianity in relation to HETs and AI.
Why do we need more questionnaires to measure aspects of spirituality/religiosity when we already have so many well-tried instruments in use? One answer is that research in this field is growing and ...that new research questions continuously do arise. Several of these new questions cannot be easily answered with the instruments designed for previous questions. The field is expanding and, consequently, the research topics. Meanwhile several multidimensional instruments were developed which cover existential, prosocial, religious and non-religious forms of spirituality, hope, peace and trust—and several more. The ‘disadvantage’ of these instruments is the fact that some are conceptually broad and often rather unspecific, but they might be suited quite well for culturally and spiritually diverse populations when the intention is to compare such diverse groups. This is the reason why more research on new instruments is needed as can be found in this Special Issue, and to stimulate a critical debate about their pros and cons.
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
Numerous instruments have been developed to assess spirituality and measure its association with health outcomes. This study’s aims were to identify instruments used in clinical ...research that measure spirituality; to propose a classification of these instruments; and to identify those instruments that could provide information on the need for spiritual intervention.
METHODS
A systematic literature search in MEDLINE, CINHAL, PsycINFO, ATLA, and EMBASE databases, using the terms “spirituality" and “adult$," and limited to journal articles was performed to identify clinical studies that used a spiritual assessment instrument. For each instrument identified, measured constructs, intended goals, and data on psychometric properties were retrieved. A conceptual and a functional classification of instruments were developed.
RESULTS
Thirty-five instruments were retrieved and classified into measures of general spirituality (N = 22), spiritual well-being (N = 5), spiritual coping (N = 4), and spiritual needs (N = 4) according to the conceptual classification. Instruments most frequently used in clinical research were the
FACIT-Sp
and the
Spiritual Well-Being Scale
. Data on psychometric properties were mostly limited to content validity and inter-item reliability. According to the functional classification, 16 instruments were identified that included at least one item measuring a current spiritual state, but only three of those appeared suitable to address the need for spiritual intervention.
CONCLUSIONS
Instruments identified in this systematic review assess multiple dimensions of spirituality, and the proposed classifications should help clinical researchers interested in investigating the complex relationship between spirituality and health. Findings underscore the scarcity of instruments specifically designed to measure a patient’s current spiritual state. Moreover, the relatively limited data available on psychometric properties of these instruments highlight the need for additional research to determine whether they are suitable in identifying the need for spiritual interventions.
Since the beginning of the World Health Organization, many of its staff members, regional offices, Member States, and directors-general have grappled with the question of what a ‘spiritual dimension’ ...of health looks like, and how it might enrich the health policies advocated by their organization. Contrary to the widespread perception that ‘spirituality’ is primarily related to palliative care and has emerged relatively recently within the WHO, this book shows that its history is considerably longer and more complex, and has been closely connected to the organization’s ethical aspirations, its quest for more holistic and equitable healthcare, and its struggle with the colonial legacy of international health organizations. Such ideals and struggles silently motivated many of its key actors and policies—such as the provision of universal primary healthcare—which for decades have embodied the organization’s loftiest aspirations. The WHO’s official relationship with ‘spirituality’ advanced in fits, leaps, and setbacks. At times creative and interdisciplinary, at others deeply political, this process was marked by cycles of institutional forgetting and remembering. Rather than a triumph of religious lobbyists, this book argues, the ‘spiritual dimension’ of health may be better understood as a ‘ghost’ that has haunted—and continues to haunt—the WHO as it comes to terms with its mandate of advancing health as a state of ‘complete well-being’ available to all.
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