Comparing and Contrasting Patient and Health Care Professional Views on Spiritual Care: Implications for Practice

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Background: Providing spiritual care has been identified as important in cancer care, especially for those individuals who are living with advanced disease. However, the busy nature of the current health care environment has created challenges for health care practitioners to identify spiritual distress and engage in appropriate interventions. Aim: This project was undertaken to deepen our understanding of spiritual care and the realities of identifying spiritual distress in a busy clinical environment. We sought to identify if there was a simple question that would be useful in screening for spiritual distress when used by the frontline provider. Methods: Patients with advanced disease (N=16) and health care practitioners (N=21) who care for them were interviewed in depth using an open-ended approach. Verbatim transcripts were analyzed separately for each group and themes identified. Subsequently, the perspectives from each group were compared, and common as well as discordance perspectives were identified. Results: Common views included spirituality as unique to the individual; spiritual distress as isolation, loneliness, and a sense of disconnection; spiritual care as listening, being with, and engendering a sense of connectedness; and identifying spiritual distress as needing a conversation rather than a single question. Contrasting views were seen in the difficulty health care practitioners had in describing spirituality, giving examples of spiritual distress and spiritual care from their own practices, and seeing a role for themselves in providing spiritual care. Patients, on the other hand, easily described these concepts and offered eloquent examples of their experiences related to spirituality and receiving spiritual care. Conclusion: Health care practitioners in this study struggled in describing spirituality and identifying roles for themselves in providing spiritual care. Patients considered spiritual care as important to their experience of living with advanced disease and expected it would be provided by their practitioners. The variation in perspectives could contribute to “missed opportunities” to support individuals and provide meaningful spiritual care.