Spiritual Care in Palliative Care: A Systematic Review of the Recent European Literature.

Marie-José H E Gijsberts,Erik Olsman,Anke I Liefbroer,René Otten

doi:10.3390/medsci7020025

Abstract

Many studies on spiritual care in palliative care are performed in the US, leaving other continents unexplored. The objective of this systematic review is to map the recent studies on spiritual care in palliative care in Europe. PubMed, CINAHL, ATLA, PsycINFO, ERIC, IBSS, Web of Science, EMBASE, and other databases were searched. Included were European studies published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2015, 2016, or 2017. The characteristics of the included studies were analyzed and a narrative synthesis of the extracted data was performed. 53 articles were included. Spiritual care was seen as attention for spirituality, presence, empowerment, and bringing peace. It implied creative, narrative, and ritual work. Though several studies reported positive effects of spiritual care, like the easing of discomfort, the evidence for spiritual care is low. Requirements for implementation of spiritual care in (palliative) care were: Developing spiritual competency, including self-reflection, and visibility of spirituality and spiritual care, which are required from spiritual counselors that they participated in existing organizational structures. This study has provided insight into spiritual care in palliative care in Europe. Future studies are necessary to develop appropriate patient outcomes and to investigate the effects of spiritual care more fully.

Highlights

Spiritual care is an intrinsic and essential component of palliative care, central to Cicely Saunders’understanding [1], and recognized by and included in the World Health Organization definition of palliative care for almost 15 years [2,3]
There is evidence that lack of spiritual support by health care teams is associated with poor quality of life, dissatisfaction with care, less hospice utilization, more aggressive treatment, and increased costs, among ethnic minority groups and patients with high levels of religious coping [6,15,16,17]
This study aimed to map the recent empirical literature on spiritual care in palliative care in Europe, and 53 studies were included in the analysis

Summary

Introduction

Spiritual care is an intrinsic and essential component of palliative care, central to Cicely Saunders’understanding [1], and recognized by and included in the World Health Organization definition of palliative care for almost 15 years [2,3]. There is evidence that lack of spiritual support by health care teams is associated with poor quality of life, dissatisfaction with care, less hospice utilization, more aggressive treatment, and increased costs, among ethnic minority groups and patients with high levels of religious coping [6,15,16,17]. Despite this emerging evidence and its status as a core dimension of palliative care, spiritual care remains the least developed and most neglected dimension of palliative care [18,19,20,21].

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Conclusion