Abstract
BackgroundThe EAPC White Paper addresses the issue of spiritual care education for all palliative care professionals. It is to guide health care professionals involved in teaching or training of palliative care and spiritual care; stakeholders, leaders and decision makers responsible for training and education; as well as national and local curricula development groups.MethodsEarly in 2018, preliminary draft paper was written by members of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) spiritual care reference group inviting comment on the four core elements of spiritual care education as outlined by Gamondi et al. (2013) in their paper on palliative care core competencies. The preliminary draft paper was circulated to experts from the EAPC spiritual care reference group for feedback. At the second stage feedback was incorporated into a second draft paper and experts and representatives of national palliative care organizations were invited to provide feedback and suggest revisions. The final version incorporated the subsequent criticism and as a result, the Gamondi framework was explored and critically revised leading to updated suggestions for spiritual care education in palliative care.ResultsThe EAPC white paper points out the importance of spiritual care as an integral part of palliative care and suggests incorporating it accordingly into educational activities and training models in palliative care. The revised spiritual care education competencies for all palliative care providers are accompanied by the best practice models and research evidence, at the same time being sensitive towards different development stages of the palliative care services across the European region.ConclusionsBetter education can help the healthcare practitioner to avoid being distracted by their own fears, prejudices, and restraints and attend to the patient and his/her family. This EAPC white paper encourages and facilitates high quality, multi-disciplinary, academically and financially accessible spiritual care education to all palliative care staff.
Highlights
The European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) White Paper addresses the issue of spiritual care education for all palliative care professionals
Palliative care services and interest in palliative care provision are growing across Europe [1], and while not all countries have yet developed full palliative care services with multi-disciplinary teams [2], this paper summarises a shared vision of multi-disciplinary spiritual care (SC) provision in palliative care, for which all services should aim
The United Nations (UN) and World Health Organisation (WHO) state that providing access to “palliative care is an ethical responsibility of health care systems, (2020) 19:9 and that it is the ethical duty of health care professionals to alleviate pain and suffering, whether physical, psychosocial or spiritual, irrespective of whether the disease or condition can be cured, and that end-of-life care for individuals is among the critical components of palliative care” [3]
Summary
The EAPC White Paper addresses the issue of spiritual care education for all palliative care professionals. Healthcare professionals still report difficulty in grasping what is meant by spirituality and spiritual care and often fail to meet the spiritual needs of patients [12,13,14] This is a matter of concern as, according to the WHO, the spiritual dimension is an integral meaning-giving aspect of human existence and spiritual needs are commonly experienced by patients with sudden ill-health or loss, chronic conditions, and life-limiting conditions [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]
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