Using spiritual care to alleviate religious, spiritual, and moral struggles arising from acute health crises

Abstract

Summary Extensive research on religious coping demonstrates that aspects of religion and spirituality may help or harm people going through life crises and trauma. Many people experience religious, spiritual, and moral struggles in coping with crises. While some people are able to draw upon aspects of their religious, spiritual, or moral orienting systems to experience growth in the midst of such struggles, for many people religious, spiritual, and moral struggles are associated with poorer health and well-being. I argue that research on religious, spiritual, and moral struggles ethically compels medical care providers to provide holistic comprehensive care of acute health crises, such that people's beliefs, values, and ways of coping become resources and not liabilities. Healthcare providers, ethically mandated to ‘do no harm’, risk medically neglecting patients by ignoring the religious, spiritual, and moral struggles arising from their acute health crises. What might spiritually oriented care of religious, spiritual, and moral struggles look like? The concept of moral orienting systems is described as a way to practice evidence-based and intercultural care of religious, spiritual, and moral struggles arising from acute health crises.