Reply to this post with at least 300 words, Minimum of 2 scholarly references in APA format within the last 5 years published.
Nurses have the responsibility to consider and meet to the best of their roles the needs of the patient. As comprehensive health care providers, this includes addressing the spiritual aspects of the client too. Spirituality forms part of the inclusive process of treatment and is considered an essential part like any other aspect. In this regard, to better serve this spiritual purpose, measuring and assessing tools have been implemented in order to evaluate the validity and reliability of spiritual care as the notion of a dimension of human existence.
The first step to evaluate the spiritual aspects in nursing is to understand and classify this concept. Spirituality in health related settings can be basically defined by four main themes to consider when facing the patient: religious systems of beliefs and values; life meaning, purpose, and connections with others; non-religious systems of beliefs and values; and metaphysical or transcendental phenomena. There are cases where the notion of spirituality is not well defined and nurses fail to deliver adequate care in meeting the patient’s needs, so understanding this concept is very important in nursing practice.
Furthermore, spirituality is utilized in a systematic way in health-related practices following practical guidelines, which can be explained in the context of a case scenario. An example of how spiritual care can be evaluated and thus put into action is by using the Actioning Spirituality and Spiritual care in Education Training (ASSET) model. This model provides a framework for the assessment of spiritual needs, planning, implementing, and evaluating of spiritual care for patients. The increase in the nurses’ awareness about the essence of spirituality directly enables them to offer holistic care. This is accomplished by introducing it to the curriculum of the nurse programs in universities. It can be taught using traditional teaching methods during lectures as well as more comprehensive methods such as case studies, group discussions, and self reflection exercises.
The impact of such methods of education for nurses significantly increases the spirituality, spiritual well-being, and spiritual care competence of nurses, further improving the holistic care of patients by smoothly identifying and managing their needs. As not all patients require the same type of spiritual care, the ASSET model is essential in the practice for assessing and implementing the different and unique to each patient treatments.
References:
https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/bjon.2004.13.19.16322
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0898010107303890
Cerit, E., & Özkan, B. (2021). The Importance of Spiritual Care in Nursing. Turkish Journal of Science and Health, 2(2), 33-39.
Puchalski, C. (2021). Spiritual care in health care: Guideline, models, spiritual assessment and the use of the© FICA Spiritual History Tool. In Spiritual needs in research and practice (pp. 27-45). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
