Peer # 1 The Use of Spirituality in Nursing Practice
Spirituality has been used in nursing practice for various purposes. Spiritual care positively affects individuals’ interpersonal relationships, spiritual well-being, stress responses, and sense of integrity. Spiritual well-being, for instance, contributes to increased tolerance of emotional and physical stress, lower risk of suicide, and decreased levels of pain, anxiety, and depression. According to Rachel et al. (2019), nurses play an integral role in providing spiritual care and assessing the spiritual needs of their patients. They also take the existing opportunities to engage with patients to meet their spiritual needs. However, nurses seldom engage their patients consistently in providing spiritual care (Cosentino et al., 2020). In nursing, spirituality is studied and utilized in a more structured format and includes aspects such as feelings of connectedness, transcendence, purpose, a higher power, and relationships (Rachel et al., 2019).
Different tools are used to evaluate spirituality. The main tools include SCCRS, FICA, and HOPE. The SCCRS assesses the individual nurses’ values and beliefs about spiritual care and spirituality (Rachel et al., 2019). The FICA guides healthcare professionals through questions specifically designed to bring out the spirituality of a patient and its impact on health care. The assessment tool starts with queries about belief and faith, and their relevance to the patient and their faith community. The HOPE is another crucial tool with specific questions about the patient’s sources of hope, strength, connection, peace, and comfort.
In conclusion, nurses should learn the best ways to evaluate spirituality and offer spiritual care. These professionals benefit a great deal from the integration of spiritual care into the nursing curricula. Nurses need training on interventions relating to spiritual care to effectively provide spiritual care. The training will further help them assess the spiritual needs of patients. Overall, spiritual care has positive implications for the health and well-being of individuals.
Peer #2 Importance of Spirituality in Nursing Practice
One of the vital aspects of spirituality in nursing is that it gives the nurses the ability to be patient, tender, and develop care for the patients during recovery. Rangel et al. (2021) argue that patients are vulnerable to stress, germs, and other pathogens when admitted to hospitals. However, to ensure that they undergo a progressive recovery, the spirit of gentleness and care help engrave itself in nurses, thus providing adequate care to the patients without complaint or fatigue. Also, spiritualism enhances and gives the nurses the wisdom and knowledge to walk the patients through the journey of stress, depression, and loneliness through therapy, thus enhancing their recovery.
Secondly, Sahawneh and Boss (2021) state that the importance of nursing care is to take the patient through effective pharmacological and non-pharmacological procedures to ensure that not only does the patient recover from pathogen, but also learns the effective ways to avoid sicknesses. In this case, spiritualism makes the nurses make crucial medical decisions and develop politeness and reflective information that makes the patient understand that sickness is not a punishment but rather a body readjustment mechanism that, with adequate care and process, is reverted and normalcy restored.
Lastly, spiritualism enhances the provision of quality care to improve the patients’ lives. According to Shelly, Miller, and Fenstermacher (2021), the bible service to humanity is service to God. They who believe in God and work in nursing care believe that effective and quality services provided to the patients are equal to serving their Gods and shall be rewarded in heaven. This understanding makes the nursing to provide adequate services without the fear of disappointing their God.
Challenges of Spirituality in Nursing Practice
One of the biggest challenges of spiritualism in nursing is differential religious beliefs, causing a conflict in practice. For instance, when a Muslim and a Christian get involved in a patient’s life, religious beliefs are set aside to save the patient’s life. However, during recovery, when these two practitioners disagree on the model of therapeutic care and help, it is the patient who will be on the receiving end. Secondly, Li et al. (2021) states that a great professional and spiritual conflict in the medical institutions affects the effective implementation of the calling to provide care. For instance, when a patient is diagnosed with a chronic disease, believers state that the disease is a curse from their forefathers, while scientists believe a change in lifestyle causes it. These conflicts trickle down to the nurses, who then take sides and thus causing damage to the patient. Sometimes, the patient dies due to the escalation of these conflicts.
Conclusion
In summary, this research acknowledges that spiritualism is critical in nursing practice. However, its emotional appeal and attachment cause professional, belief and emotional conflict in care, thus jeopardizing the quality of care. Nonetheless, the practical recommendation for spiritualism in practice is to exercise it privately without involving other people, as it has a direct emotional effect on the patient and other medical experts.
