Spiritual care (2024)

FAQs

Spiritual care? ›

Spiritual care

Spiritual care is an important part of palliative care. Having a terminal illness often leads people to think about their lives in new ways, and their spiritual needs may change. All health and social care professionals can help explore the patient's spiritual needs, and identify when someone might need more support.

It has the goal of fostering a person's spiritual and existential well-being; and, if desired, it can include guidance, prayer, meditation, spiritual reflection and scriptural study.

Five ethical principles to guide spiritual care are set forth: patient-centredness, holism, discretion, accompaniment, and tolerance.

Pastoral care, or cure of souls, refers to emotional, social and spiritual support.

Examples of spiritual self-care activities are meditation, praying, scripture reading and reflection, listening to inspirational music, various inspirational talks and testimonies in life, spending time in nature and attending virtual spiritual activities (including masses and devotional practices), talking with a ...

Love (community, connection) • Faith (worldview) • Hope (vision) • Virtue (ethics) • Beauty (renewal) These needs are present whether the individual recognises them or not.” What are spiritual needs? What are the sources of community, connection, worldview, vision, ethics and renewal for you?

Offer spiritual and emotional support during a hospitalization through individual assessment and counselling services. Provide support for managing change, illness, grief, and loss. Facilitate patient/peer support groups. Listen to concerns and help guide questions for the health-care teams.

Meditation, awe, forgiveness, compassion, and gratitude provide practical ways to increase well-being. Spiritual practices can be conducted individually, but they may have more impact when practiced in a community.

How do you take care of spiritually? ›

Spiritual care values the uniqueness of each person by recognizing and honoring their beliefs, values, practices, and rituals, and allowing openness for the discussion, expression, and experience of those beliefs.

Researchers dedicated to understanding the spiritual needs of the dying have described several important goals of spiritual care. These include hope, meaning, forgiveness, love, reconciliation, gratitude, awe, humility and surrender.

Spiritual care is that care which recognises and responds to the needs of the human spirit when faced with trauma, ill health or sadness and can include the need for meaning, for self worth, to express oneself, for faith support, perhaps for rites or prayer or sacrament, or simply for a sensitive listener.

Spiritual care attends to a person's spiritual or religious needs as he or she copes with illness, loss, grief or pain and can help him or her heal emotionally as well as physically, rebuild relationships and regain a sense of spiritual wellbeing.

I love Bill O'Hanlon's definition of spirituality in his book “Pathways to Spirituality”. He defines it as the three C's: Connection to something greater than yourself, Compassion or “feeling with” ourselves, others and the world and Contribution, or service to others and the world.

Holistic care addresses the physical, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of the client. Health care providers, however, frequently overlook the spiritual dimension. Spiritual care is inseparable from physical, social and psychological care because together they form the whole.