Abstract
BackgroundSpirituality is a fundamental, intrinsic aspect of human beings and should be a core component of quality palliative care. There is an urgent need to train hospice palliative care teams (HPCTs) to enhance their ability to provide spiritual care. This study aimed to develop and evaluate a meaning-centered, spiritual care training program (McSCTP) for HPCTs (McSCTP-HPCTs).MethodsThe modules’ content was informed by Viktor Frankl’s meaning-centered logotherapy with its emphasis on spiritual resources, as well as the spiritual care model of the Interprofessional Spiritual Care Education Curriculum (ISPEC). Following development, we conducted a pilot test with four nurses. We used the results to inform the final program, which we tested in an intervention involving 13 members of HPCTs. We took measurements using self-administered questionnaires at three points before and after the intervention. Using descriptive statistics, the Mann-Whitney U test, and the Kruskal-Wallis test, we analyzed the participants’ demographic and career-related characteristics, as well as the degree of variance between three outcome variables: compassion fatigue (CF), spiritual care competencies (SCCs), and spiritual care therapeutics (SCT).ResultsWe divided the McSCTP-HPCTs into five modules. Module I: The HPCTs’ SCC evaluation, understanding the major concepts of spiritual care and logotherapy; Modules II-IV: Meaning-centered interventions (MCIs) related to spiritual needs (existential, relational, and transcendental/religious); Module V: The process of meaning-centered spiritual care. The preliminary evaluation revealed significant differences in all three outcome variables at the posttest point (CF, p = 0.037; SCCs, p = 0.005; SCT, p = 0.002). At the four-week follow-up test point, we only found statistical significance with the SCCs (p = 0.006).ConclusionsThe McSCTP-HPCTs is suitable for use in clinical settings and provides evidence for assessing the SCCs of HPCTs.
Highlights
Spirituality is a fundamental, intrinsic aspect of human beings and should be a core component of quality palliative care
The current study differs from these investigations in that we propose a spiritual care training program that is meaning-centered, which is based on the core principles of Victor Frankl’s logotherapy, and an approach that has not been previously taken
Theoretical Foundation We created the McSCTP-Hospice palliative care team (HPCT) by incorporating the spiritual care guidelines formulated by Interprofessional Spiritual Care Education Curriculum (ISPEC) [6], as well as concepts from Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy—conceived of through his experiences in concentration camps in World War II—and we relied on meaning-centered theory to focus on and enhance the resources of spirituality (Fig. 1)
Summary
Spirituality is a fundamental, intrinsic aspect of human beings and should be a core component of quality palliative care. There is an urgent need to train hospice palliative care teams (HPCTs) to enhance their ability to provide spiritual care. The aim of HPC is to relieve the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual suffering of patients with life-threatening illnesses and to improve their quality of life (QoL), as well as that of their family caregivers [1]. Spiritual well-being may protect one against despair at the end of life, and spiritual care is a fundamental component of quality palliative care [2,3,4,5]. According to an Interprofessional Spiritual Care Education Curriculum (ISPEC) report [6], the spiritual well-being of patients and their family caregivers is a major factor influencing healthcare outcomes such as QoL, positive coping, satisfaction with caring, and decision-making at the end of life [7, 8]
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