What is "spiritual" care?
Spiritual care refers to the awareness of the deep personality of the patient, the story or "narrative" of his / her life which gives unique significance to this particular illness. So the same medical facts can be manifest totally differently in different people and have to be cared for and managed differently.
If any of you have sadly been ill yourself and had to ask for medical help you will have experienced the value of such "spiritual care" as a really important partner to the academic and surgical skills of your colleague.
Why is it important?
Here in the UK, and in many parts of the world, the nursing profession has generally been far ahead of the doctors in recognising and studying the need of patients for spiritual care.
A whole issue of the 'Journal of Clinical Nursing' (2006 - 15) was recently devoted to papers on this.
One paper from Malta 'demonstrated the complexity of spiritual care, which requires nurses to increase their awareness of the uniqueness of each individual patient with regard to the connection between mind, body and spirit; the assessment of the spiritual status of patients during illness and the implementation of holistic care. These findings will enable nurses to consider the importance of spiritual care, which may allow them to help empower patients find meaning and purpose during times of illness.'
Another paper was entitled: 'Every person matters.'
The final paper's abstract concludes: 'In listening to and taking seriously its 'enemies', nursing has the opportunity to establish spirituality as an important, creative and vibrant aspect of nursing practice that has the capacity to grow and respond constructively to its 'enemies', in ways that make whole-person-care a real possibility.'
If these things are true for nurses, how much they also should apply to doctors!
It is a real but positive challenge for us to increase our awareness of the uniqueness of each individual, treat every patient as a person who matters, and establish spiritual care as a creative and vibrant aspect of practice that makes whole-person care a real possibility.
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