The Ramifications of Spirituality in Healthcare
Topic: Provider Roles in Spiritual Care
– Recall personal spiritual experiences or sacred encounters
with other health care professionals and contrast them with the experiences of
others.
– Develop a spiritual needs assessment tool and administer
it to another person.
– Examine guidelines that health care providers follow in
professional situations and compare permitted and restricted actions of various
professional situations.
Spiritual Needs Assessment
1) Use the articles provided in the readings. The Joint
Commission provides some guidelines for creating spiritual assessment tools for
evaluating the spiritual needs of patients. Use these resources and any other
guidelines/examples available, you can also make up your own tool for assessing
the spiritual needs of patients.
Read Evaluating your Spiritual Assessment
Process, from the Joint Commission: The Source (2005), located on the
Professional Chaplains Web site Issue 2 http://www.professionalchaplains.org/uploadedFiles/pdf/JCAHO-evaluating-your-spiritual-assessment-process.pdf.
The Ramifications of Spirituality in Healthcare
Read The Joint Commission Standards FAQ Details-
Spiritual Assessment, located on the Joint Commission Web site at
http://www.jointcommission.org/standards_information/jcfaqdetails.aspx?StandardsFaqId=290&ProgramId=1.
a) The spiritual needs assessment tool should include a
minimum of five questions that can either be answered by the patient and/or by
your observation of the patient. The information can be presented in a Word
document, in a table, or questionnaire format.
2) Using your assessment tool questions, practice completing
a spiritual assessment with either a patient, family member, or friend. Analyze
the results.
a) Write a brief summary of the assessment findings.
b) What significant discoveries did you make about the
individual you chose to assess?
c) What went well?
d) What would you do differently in the future?
e) Were there any barriers or challenges that inhibited your
ability to complete the assessment tool? How would you address these in the
future or change your assessment to better address these challenges?
f) Describe the spiritual experience you had with the
patient, family member, or friend using this tool. How does this tool allow you
to better meet the needs of the patient?
