The importance of Spiritual Care in the Nursing Practice - Essay Example

?The importance of Spiritual Care in the Nursing Practice This paper deals with spirituality in nursing practice. Nursing goes beyond treatment of disease. It is an extension of homely care one can expect from kith and kin naturally. The nursing profession is expected to give the same care for which the pre-requisite is spirituality in nursing which should be imparted in nursing education itself as part of the curriculum. Spirituality is neutral to all religions which espouse the cause of interconnectedness. It is therefore, essential that spirituality is made a part and parcel of nursing profession. Holistic nursing is a practice that focuses on healing the whole person through the unity of body, mind and soul. It is nursing care that features a higher awareness of self, others and spirituality while in practice. Holistic nursing care requires attention to spiritual aspects of a person. Through nurse education, students can develop spiritual self-awareness and be more apt to provide sensitive, spiritual care for other as they advance through development as a nurse (Shores, 2010). The purpose of this paper is to identify the importance of nurse education on spiritual care. Using critical inquiry, I will identify personal beliefs, assumptions and meaning on the subject while analyzing the importance of this care in practice. My spiritual development has been ongoing and will continue to be a component of my nurse education. I recognize that before I can begin to address the spiritual needs of patients’, I first need to address my own. I identify spirituality is an inner path enabling me as a person to discover my deepest values and beliefs; the ones in which I live by. Although I am not Christian, I continue to explore my spirituality and beliefs through Catholicism. I believe in one God made up of three persons and that Jesus Christ is his son. I believe the bible is The Word of God written by men inspired by him. I believe in his virtues of honesty, truthfulness, respect, compassion, love, joy and more. I am a spiritual person inspired by his righteousness to be the best that I can be to do good as a person. In nurse education patient-care is much more than disease management; it involves the needs of the whole person; mind, body and soul. Addressing the patients’ spirituality should be a routine part of nursing care for many reasons. The first being that, religious beliefs and spiritual needs are common amongst patients, second, spiritual beliefs influence medical decisions, third, there is a relationship between spirituality and health, and the last, supporting a patients’ spirituality can enrich the nurse-patient relationship. Spiritual development is an ongoing, component of overall learning. Identifying student perspectives of these areas of spirituality can further their educational journey (Shores, 2010) Students can incorporate spirituality into their practice by assessing their personal values, beliefs. By doing so students are able to identify their own personal biases and assumptions and by incorporating a knowledge base of ethical practices outline by their institutions, legislation and professional practice guidelines. Ultimately, incorporating spiritual care in a patients practice can be identified by taking a patient’s history. Spiritual history gives insight to a patients’ value and belief systems and can be helpful identify spiritual distress. Spiritual history recognizes patients’ sources of hope, strength and comforts in the healing environment. Spirituality is generic Spirituality in nursing has two sides to it. One, spirituality observed by the nurse and the other, spiritual inclination of the patient. Therefore, a nurse has not only to be spiritual but also respectful of the religious beliefs of her patients. Only then, spirituality in nursing becomes wholesome. It is strange that while religiousness is associated with well-being in health, nursing discourse involved in health care, has not attached much importance to spirituality that is concomitant with religion. It is thought provoking that how confidentiality associated with spirituality can be meaningful, when members of a prayer community pray for the well being of one another. Spirituality is common to all religions and hence there is no bar on practicing spirituality in health by a nursing person. This leads to a position of being ‘spiritual but not religious’. It can be said that spirituality is generic and does not purport to promote a religion. This leads one to believe that by being spiritual in nursing, it is not necessarily religious bigotry (Fowler, 2009). Dignity Another aspect to nursing is dignity which promotes spirituality. Dignity is often relative as pointed in various life situations. As for dignity in caring, it is often associated with human rights and bio ethics etc but not in a clear-cut manner. Hence, dignity needs to be more accurately defined. For example, the Australian Nursing Council’s Code of Professional Conduct and Commonwealth Standards for Nursing Homes insist that a nurse must be mindful of her patient’s dignity, culture, values, beliefs and privacy. Beliefs imply spirituality and in turn dignity. If the patient’s spirituality is respected, the patient is supposed to be treated with dignity. It does not, however, mean that dignity is exclusive to spirituality. Dignity is all-pervasive (Shotton and Seedhouse, 1998). Spirituality in Nursing Education Spirituality should ideally start as part of nursing curriculum. This will ensure that this will be observed by nurses in their professional practice. (Shores, 2010). Because, spirituality as part of nursing has been found to promote not only health and well-being but also a sense of “ life satisfaction and coping, healing and recovery, hope and well-being, psychosocial adjustment and a sense of coherence, and quality of life in general” (Shores, 2010, p 8). Nursing as caring As early as in 1850s Florence Nightingale introduced the concept of caring which goes beyond the treatment of disease. Her concept of caring meant to create an environment for natural process of healing. Nursing relates to holistic caring with the underpinnings of nurse theorists Florence Nightingale, Virginia Henderson, Madeleine Leininger and Jean Watson. Jean-Watson’s ten caritas wholly relates to spirituality in nursing. They are, loving with a consciousness of caring, respecting the belief systems of others, practicing spirituality that promotes interconnectedness, development of relationship that reassures trust and caring, recognizing the positive and negative attitudes of self and others as if they are part of the whole, adopting all possible ways of caring as also knowing and being, engaging in teaching-learning experiences, creating a healing environment, making available all caring essentials so as to create a mind-body-sprit wholeness, and invoking spiritual and existential inclinations in their own selves and others. These principles have the underlying idea that all of life is interconnected (SItzman, 2007). Conclusion With the above briefing, it must become clear that a nursing practitioner should adopt spirituality in her professional life with the firm belief that all of life is interconnected. The nurse should recognize that patient needs all the caring and attention as the former would expect in the place of a patient. In other words, spirituality impresses upon the nurse that as part of the interconnectedness, a part of her own body, mind, and spirit need care and attention. References Fowler D Marsha (2009) Preface to Thematic Section: Religions, Spirituality, Ethics and Nursing. Nursing Ethics, 16 (4) pp 391-392 Shotton Leila and Seedhouse David (1998) Practical Dignity in Caring, Nursing Ethics, 5(3) pp 246-255. Shores I Cynthia (2010) Spiritual Perspectives of Nursing Students Nursing Education Perspectives 31(1) pp 8-11 Sitzman L Kathleen (2007) Teaching-Learning Professional Caring Based on Jean Watson’s Theory of Human Caring. International Journal of Human Caring 11(4) pp 8-15 Read More