AIM To investigate nursing students' perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care. BACKGROUND Spirituality is an essential part of holistic care but often neglected in practice. Barriers to spiritual care include limited educational preparation, negative attitudes towards spirituality, confusion about nurses' role, perceptions of incompetence and avoidance of spiritual matters. There is lim...

Body, mind, and spirit are integrally connected. Medical training in the Western world has been strong concerning the more easily measured physical aspects, and on the mental needs it has been virtually mute on how to minister to the spiritual needs of our patients. Learning the spiritual aspects of medical care is not a typical part of the medical school curriculum, and yet it is emerging as s...

Researchers seem to be in agreement that spirituality is an important component of the holistic care approach commonly found in palliative care. Shiselweni Home-Based Care (SHBC) is a faith-based organization in Swaziland working among people with HIV and AIDS in the poorest and most affected areas of the country. They endeavor to restore and build up each client's dignity through the way in wh...

Last on everyone’s list of the values of old-growth forests—after goods, services, information, and cultural, recreational, and scenic values—is the sometimes vexing and usually undefined category of spiritual values. Yet oldgrowth forests hold particular value for the human spirit, the imagining and feeling part of the human mind. The challenge is to articulate, in secular terms, the sources o...

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is described as a spiritual fellowship by many of its members, but its spiritual orientation needs to be better understood by clinicians and researchers. Spirituality is a latent construct, one that is inferred from multiple component dimensions, such as social psychology, neurophysiology, and treatment outcome research. Mechanisms related to its role in promotion of r...

abstract background: although nurses acknowledge that spiritual care is part of their role, in reality, it is performed to a lesser extent. the purpose of the present study was to explore nurses’ and patients’ experiences about the conditions of spiritual care and spiritual interventions in the oncology units of tabriz. materials and methods: this study was conducted with a qualitative conventi...

BACKGROUND Patients with incurable, progressive disease receiving palliative care in sub-Saharan Africa experience high levels of spiritual distress with a detrimental impact on their quality of life. Locally validated measurement tools are needed to identify patients' spiritual needs and evaluate and improve spiritual care, but up to now such tools have been lacking in Africa. The African Pall...

The aim of this study was to translate and test the psychometric properties of a Farsi and an English version of the spiritual needs questionnaire (SpNQ) a measure originally developed in German. The World Health Organization guideline for translating and validating questionnaires was used. Participants were recruited from hospitals in Iran and New Zealand during an outpatient follow-up appoint...

Spirituality and religiosity have been defined by several governing bodies to mean everything from purpose in life, beliefs, faith, and hope, to transcendence with a higher being. The absence of uniformity regarding the components of spirituality and religiosity has created a barrier for professional caregivers in identifying, assessing, and providing spiritual needs. The diagnosis of cancer of...

For those nearing the end of life, "wellness" must encompass reduction in suffering as well as the promotion of behaviors that mitigate stress and help people prepare for death. We discuss the design of a virtual conversational palliative care coach that works with individuals during their last year of life to help them manage symptoms, reduce stress, identify and address unmet spiritual needs,...