scholarly journals Verbalizing spiritual needs in palliative care: a qualitative interview study on verbal and non-verbal communication in two Danish hospices

2022 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Stage Voetmann ◽  
Niels Christian Hvidt ◽  
Dorte Toudal Viftrup
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Professional ◽  
Spiritual Care ◽  
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Verbal Communication ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Qualitative Interview Study ◽  
Spiritual Nature ◽  
Spiritual Communication ◽  
The Way

AbstractDenmark is considered one of the World’s most secular societies, and spiritual matters are rarely verbalized in public. Patients report that their spiritual needs are not cared for sufficiently. For studying spiritual care and communication, twelve patients admitted to two Danish hospices were interviewed. Verbal and non-verbal communication between patients and healthcare professionals were identified and analysed. Methodically, the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used, and the findings were discussed through the lenses of existential psychology as well as philosophy and theory of caring sciences. Three themes were identified: 1. When death becomes present, 2. Direction of the initiative, and 3. Bodily presence and non-verbal communication. The encounter between patient and healthcare professional is greatly influenced by sensing, decoding, and interpretation. A perceived connection between the patient and the healthcare professional is of great importance as to how the patient experiences the relationship with the healthcare professional.The patient’s perception and the patient’s bodily experience of the healthcare professional are crucial to whether the patient opens up to the healthcare professional about thoughts and needs of a spiritual nature and initiates a conversation hereabout. In this way we found three dynamically connected movements toward spiritual care: 1. From secular to spiritual aspects of care 2. From bodily, sensory to verbal aspects of spiritual care and 3. From biomedical to spiritual communication and care. Thus, the non-verbal dimension becomes a prerequisite for the verbal dimension of spiritual communication to develop and unfold. The behaviour of the healthcare professionals, characterised by the way they move physically and the way they touch the patient, was found to be just as important as verbal conversation when it comes to spiritual care. The healthcare professional can create a connection to the patient through bodily and relational presence. Furthermore, the healthcare professionals should let their sensing and impressions guide them when meeting the patient in dialog about matters of a spiritual nature. Their perception of the patient and non-verbal communication are a prerequisite for being able to meet patient’s spiritual needs with care and verbal communication.

scholarly journals Older Adults’ Experience of Meaning at the End of Life in Two Danish Hospices: A Qualitative Interview Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorte Toudal Viftrup ◽  
Christina Prinds ◽  
Ricko Damberg Nissen ◽  
Vibeke Østergaard Steenfeldt ◽  
Jens Søndergaard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Qualitative Interview Study ◽  
Imminent Death ◽  
Medical Paradigm ◽  
Chronological Time

The aim of this study was to explore how older adults (aged > 65) confronted with imminent death express their thoughts and feelings about death and dying and verbalize meaning. Furthermore, the aim was to investigate how health professionals could better address the needs of this patient group to experience meaning at the end of life. The study applied a qualitative method, involving semi-structured interviews with 10 participants at two hospices. The method of analysis was interpretative phenomenological analysis. We found three chronological time-based themes: (1) Approaching Death, (2) The time before dying, and (3) The afterlife. The participants displayed scarce existential vernacular for pursuing meaning with approaching death. They primarily applied understanding and vocabulary from a medical paradigm. The participants’ descriptions of how they experienced and pursued meaning in the time before dying were also predominantly characterized by medical vernacular, but these descriptions did include a few existential words and understandings. When expressing thoughts and meaning about the afterlife, participants initiated a two-way dialogue with the interviewer and primarily used existential vernacular. This indicates that the participants’ scarce existential vernacular to talk about meaning might be because people are not used to talking with healthcare professionals about meaning or their thoughts and feelings about death. They are mostly “trained” in medical vernacular. We found that participants’ use of, respectively, medical or existential vernacular affected how they experienced meaning and hope at the end of life. We encourage healthcare professionals to enter into existential dialogues with people to support and strengthen their experiences of meaning and hope at the end of life.

scholarly journals Factors influencing view of healthcare professionals on spiritual needs of patients.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Imrich Andrási ◽  
Milan Minarik ◽  
Marek Sichman
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Life Balance ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Leave Taking ◽  
Human Responsibility ◽  
The Way

Dying process can take different forms, may be perceived differently by persons present during the process, and it can be differently asses by dying because of their individuality. We must realize that every death is related to leave-taking man what man liked, with those whom he loved and who were close to him. Man is preparing himself to the dying during all his life, because the way of life is the way to death and man is trying to take it, but he must learn it. We often might think that in dying we are losing happiness, peace, values that we profess and everything we owned. This raises contradictory reactions in dying and in those that are touched by death. The patient in terminal stage of the disease is entrusted to palliative care, which currently aims to ensure to provide for patients a good quality of life until the end. On the other hand, consciousness of mortality often gives life balance and teaches human responsibility for the rest of their life. Some values in these period accents and some diminish the significance. Spiritual needs are closely related to the search for the meaning of life and death and cannot be limited to religiosity, although in most cases they are in this way understood.

scholarly journals The Catalogue of Spiritual Care Instruments: A Scoping Review

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 252
Author(s):  
Ricko Damberg Nissen ◽  
Erik Falkø ◽  
Dorte Toudal Viftrup ◽  
Elisabeth Assing Hvidt ◽  
Jens Søndergaard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Scoping Review ◽  
Spiritual Care ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Healthcare Research ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Cultural Validity ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Further Development

Spiritual care has been a growing focus in international healthcare research over the last decades. The approaches to spiritual care are many and derive from many different medical fields and different cultural contexts and often remain unknown across healthcare areas. This points to a potential knowledge gap between existing instruments and the knowledge and use of them cross-disciplinarily and cross-culturally, and thus best practice insights are not sufficiently shared. This article contributes to the growing field of spiritual care by providing an overview of the various approaches (henceforth instruments) to assess patients’ spiritual needs in view of improving spiritual care. This was done through a scoping review method. The results of the review were collected and catalogued and presented here as ‘The Catalogue of Spiritual Care Instruments’. The included instruments derive from a wide range of geographical contexts and healthcare areas and are aimed at patients and healthcare professionals alike, clearly showing that spiritual care is a focus in healthcare internationally. However, it also shows the difficulties of defining spiritual care, the importance of local contexts, and the difficulties of cross-cultural validity. The catalogue contains 182 entries and is available as an interactive platform for the further development of spiritual care internationally.

scholarly journals Spiritual Needs Assessment in Post-Secular Contexts: An Integrative Review of Questionnaires

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (24) ◽  
pp. 12898
Author(s):  
Ricko D. Nissen ◽  
Erik Falkø ◽  
Tobias K. Stripp ◽  
Niels Christian Hvidt
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Professional ◽  
Needs Assessment ◽  
Spiritual Care ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Significant Benefit ◽  
Integrative Review ◽  
International Exchange ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
General Guideline

Research across healthcare contexts has shown that, if provided appropriately, spiritual care can be of significant benefit to patients. It can be challenging, however, to incorporate spiritual care in daily practice, not least in post-secular, culturally entwined, and pluralist contexts. The aim of this integrative review was to locate, evaluate and discuss spiritual-needs questionnaires from the post-secular perspective in relation to their applicability in secular healthcare. Eleven questionnaires were evaluated and discussed with a focus on religious/spiritual (RS) wording, local culturally entwined and pluralist contexts, and on whether a consensual understanding between patient and healthcare professional could be expected through RS wording. By highlighting some factors involved in implementing a spiritual-needs questionnaire in diverse cultural and vernacular contexts, this article can assist by providing a general guideline. This article offers an approach to the international exchange and implementation of knowledge, experiences, and best practice in relation to the use of spiritual needs-assessment questionnaires in post-secular contexts.

scholarly journals Multiculturalism in Healthcare: A Review of Current Research into Diversity Found in the Healthcare Professional Population and the Patient Population

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 112-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Tan ◽  
Shuangyu Li
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Professional ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Culturally Competent ◽  
Barriers To Healthcare ◽  
The Uk ◽  
And Training ◽  
Improve Access ◽  
The Way

Culture plays a key role in the way health is perceived and the way healthcare is used. It has been seen that there are many barriers to accessing healthcare, particularly for those who come to the UK with a different background language, religion and healthcare structure. A literature review and content analysis has been performed using 60 articles, selected from the databases PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science, in order to expose how diverse the patient and healthcare professional population truly are, the number of barriers to healthcare and how one can improve access to become culturally competent. Although this is only a small sample of the material present, it is evident that at the present time physical amenities such as having a translator present, as well the training of the healthcare professionals to be able to make the most of the situation and see the patients in a holistic and biopsychosocial approach, reveal an important area to focus more on in practice as well as in research. Thus an increased availability of resources and training needs to be made available for both patients and healthcare professionals in order to ensure competence in accessing healthcare services

scholarly journals “We are also here”—Spiritual Care Practitioners’ Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study from Poland

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Domaradzki
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Care ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Healthcare Facilities ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Current Health ◽  
The Impact

AbstractAlthough healthcare professionals have become the symbol of risk and sacrifice during the COVID-19 pandemic, spiritual care practitioners (SCP) have also put themselves at great risk while offering their service in hospitals, hospices and other healthcare facilities. This study was designed to explore the lived experiences of SCP during the current health crisis in Poland. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-four SCP. Nine major themes emerged from the interviews: personal reactions to the pandemic, SCP’s perception of the pandemic, the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of spiritual care, spiritual needs during the pandemic, work-related emotions, the impact of the COVID-19 on religion, the role of spiritual care during the outbreak, the healthcare professionals’ perceptions of SCP and barriers to the provision of spiritual care during the pandemic. The SCP indicated that although the COVID-19 crisis has affected the availability of pastoral, religious and spiritual care, it has amplified the importance of such care and has positively influenced the visibility of SCP in modern healthcare practice. Nonetheless, in such desperate times, SCP are still neglected and should be further recognised and integrated into the healthcare system.

scholarly journals Training hospital staff on spiritual care in palliative care influences patient-reported outcomes: Results of a quasi-experimental study

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 743-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joep van de Geer ◽  
Marieke Groot ◽  
Richtsje Andela ◽  
Carlo Leget ◽  
Jelle Prins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Spiritual Care ◽  
Patient Reported Outcomes ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Physical Symptoms ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Spiritual Distress ◽  
Patient Reported ◽  
Care Training

Background: Spiritual care is reported to be important to palliative patients. There is an increasing need for education in spiritual care. Aim: To measure the effects of a specific spiritual care training on patients’ reports of their perceived care and treatment. Design: A pragmatic controlled trial conducted between February 2014 and March 2015. Setting/participants: The intervention was a specific spiritual care training implemented by healthcare chaplains to eight multidisciplinary teams in six hospitals on regular wards in which patients resided in both curative and palliative trajectories. In total, 85 patients were included based on the Dutch translation of the Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool. Data were collected in the intervention and control wards pre- and post-training using questionnaires on physical symptoms, spiritual distress, involvement and attitudes (Spiritual Attitude and Involvement List) and on the perceived focus of healthcare professionals on patients’ spiritual needs. Results: All 85 patients had high scores on spiritual themes and involvement. Patients reported that attention to their spiritual needs was very important. We found a significant ( p = 0.008) effect on healthcare professionals’ attention to patients’ spiritual and existential needs and a significant ( p = 0.020) effect in favour of patients’ sleep. No effect on the spiritual distress of patients or their proxies was found. Conclusion: The effects of spiritual care training can be measured using patient-reported outcomes and seemed to indicate a positive effect on the quality of care. Future research should focus on optimizing the spiritual care training to identify the most effective elements and developing strategies to ensure long-term positive effects. This study was registered at the Dutch Trial Register: NTR4559.

scholarly journals Developing an Educational Course in Spiritual Care: An Action Research Study at Two Danish Hospices

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 827
Author(s):  
Dorte Toudal Viftrup ◽  
Kenneth Laursen ◽  
Niels Christian Hvidt
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Spiritual Care ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Training Course ◽  
Theater Workshop ◽  
The Individual

Further improvement of spiritual care in palliative care is warranted. Particularly reducing barriers and enhancing spiritual care competencies among the healthcare professionals is needed. The aim was to develop a training course in spiritual care in close collaboration with patients and staff from two Danish hospices. We applied an action research design to ensure that the training course was rooted in everyday practice of patients and staff. The methodology applied was based on philosophical hermeneutics and existential phenomenology. The action research process enabled the division into three topics on how a training course can reduce barriers towards spiritual care among the healthcare professionals. These three topics functioned as a theoretical framework for educating staff at a hospice in spiritual care. The three topics were: (1) the vulnerable encounter; (2) self-reflection concerning spiritual needs, thoughts, beliefs, and values; and (3) shared professional language for spiritual care. We operationalized the three topics into a flexible course design that could be adaptable to the practical possibilities and limitations of the individual hospice. The curriculum includes theoretical teaching, reflection exercises, and an improvisation theater workshop with professional actors. Educating staff led to the improvement of spiritual care at the hospices involved in the study.

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