Spiritual Care Visualized

Abstract

Years ago, the author was asked by a prominent palliative care leader if Spiritual Care could be conveyed in a ladder format, as pain management had been by the WHO. Many practitioners think about Spiritual Care as a way to identify and address spiritual distress. Surely it is that, but it is so much more. In this article the attempt is to depict Spiritual Care visually. Spiritual Care providers and others will tell you that along with spiritual distress there is also a powerful resource that spirituality provides. The Spiritual Care ladder endeavors to show both aspects along with their relationship to one another, their interconnectedness. This is not a resource for assessing spirituality, it is meant to help people better understand it and to visualize it, so that the tools will be more helpful. Several valuable tools have been included in this article for the assessment of the Spirituality and Faith components of a person’s life.