Nurses’ Roles in the Spiritual Care of Patients with Terminal Illness

Abstract

Traditionally, issues of religion or spiritual care are left to hospital chaplains in missionary hospitals and some first-world hospitals where chaplains are a part of holistic multi-disciplinary hospital care. In other instances, the patients are merely left on their own to call in their spiritual or religious leaders to attend to them during visiting hours. This paper posits that spiritual care of patients, especially terminally-ill ones, belongs to nurses too. Unfortunately, many nurses working with patients approaching the end of their lives might feel illequipped to recognize and respond to such spiritual needs. This paper seeks to equip front-line health care providers, especially nurses, with an actionable and practical guide to assist in identifying spiritual need in their patients and to feel confident in their ability to provide it. It focuses on terminally-ill patients who are expected to die in the near future, however much of the content is relevant to other situations such as sudden death.