OBJECTIVE Examine longitudinal relationships between spiritual coping and psychological adjustment among adolescents with chronic illness. METHODS Adolescents (N = 128; M = 14.7 years) with cystic fibrosis or diabetes completed measures of spiritual coping and adjustment at 2 time points ∼2 years apart; parents also reported on adolescent adjustment. Prospective relationships between spiritua...

This article is to review literature from 2011 to 2015 on spiritual care in nursing using CINAHL. In this article, the keywords “systematic review,” “spiritual care,” and “nursing” were used to search the CINAHL database. Initially a total of 19 articles were identified; however, 11 papers were reviewed after excluding the inappropriate articles following six categories as the definition of spi...

Uncontrolled pain is one of the most feared and debilitating symptoms among cancer patients, and many suffer unnecessarily from suboptimal pain control. Cancer-related pain is often multidimensional and can affect all aspects of a patient's life. Hence, achieving adequate pain relief among cancer patients involves a proper assessment of psychosocial, spiritual, and physical pain issues, matched...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To measure the prevalence of spiritual needs and identify factors associated with spiritual needs among patients with cancer and family caregivers. DESIGN Descriptive, cross-sectional, quantitative. SETTING Inpatients and outpatients at a university medical center in the southwestern United States. SAMPLE 156 patients with cancer and 68 family caregivers who were primar...

Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) has deleterious effects on physical, social, cognitive, and vocational functioning, and causes emotional and spiritual distress for patients and their families; however, it remains under-recognized and undertreated. This article critically reviews and integrates the available empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic treatment ...

Integrative medicine (IM) has become a major challenge for doctors and nurses, as well as psychologists and many other disciplines involved in the endeavor to help patients to better tolerate the burden of toxic therapies and give patients tools so they can actively participate in their "salutogenesis." IM encompasses psycho-oncology, acupuncture, and physical and mental exercises to restore vi...

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use is prevalent among individuals with cancer, especially breast cancer survivors. This study was conducted among 394 breast cancer survivors in selected regions of Peninsular Malaysia to identify the pattern and factors associated with CAM use. About 51% of the respondents reported CAM use as complementary treatment. Vitamins (47.2%), spiritual act...

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) may be integrated with conventional Western medicine to enhance the care of patients with cancer. Recent evidence confirms a scientific basis for the use of acupuncture, herbs, diet and energy therapies. We suggest a holistic care plan based on the concepts of biological response modification, enhancement of psycho-immunological function, better symptom contro...

Increasingly, social workers are being called on to conduct spiritual assessments, yet few assessment methods have appeared in academic literature. This article reviews five complementary assessment approaches that have recently been developed to highlight different facets of clients' spiritual lives. Specifically, one verbal model, spiritual histories, is discussed, along with four diagrammati...

Traumatic events may lead to dramatic changes in spirituality. The objective of this study was to explore whether posttraumatic spiritual transformation results not just from the traumatic event, but from spiritual experience during the crisis. The hypothesis tested was that survivors of a brush with death who had spiritual “near-death experiences” have greater spiritual growth and lesser spiri...