Traumatic events may lead to dramatic changes in spirituality. The objective of this study was to explore whether posttraumatic spiritual transformation results not just from the traumatic event, but from spiritual experience during the crisis. The hypothesis tested was that survivors of a brush with death who had spiritual “near-death experiences” have greater spiritual growth and lesser spiri...

This paper describes the Biopsychosocial Theory and contrasts it to the traditional theories of addiction. Included in the discussion is how the new theory incorporates the strengths of the older traditional theories while remaining a distinct entity with a unique set of hypotheses, and the addition of the spiritual dimension, which, from the Alcohol and Drug Services’ (ADS) perspective, has ge...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To investigate spiritual transformation among patients with cancer. DESIGN Longitudinal. SETTING A university medical center in the midwestern United States. SAMPLE 47 adult cancer survivors. METHODS Patients were asked about spirituality, religious and spiritual importance, religious coping, and spiritual gain and decline at baseline as well as nine months post-treat...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND Spiritual needs of cancer patients should be assessed and discussed by healthcare professionals. Neurosurgical nurses need to be able to assess and support neuro-oncology patients with their spiritual needs from diagnosis and throughout their hospital stay. METHODS Data were collected through questionnaires using a Critical Incident Technique (CIT) from neurosurgical ...

September-October 1998 Suffering is one of the most profound and disturbing of human experiences. The very word suffering has a resonance that relates to our sense of life’s meaning and the threat suffering poses to our hopes of happiness. It does not refer just to maladies, pains, and difficulties with which we can and should cope. It involves crises and threats that constitute a degradation o...

Humans are three-dimensional, body-soul-spirit entities, but nevertheless unitary, indivisible persons. Animal behavior includes deterministic and random constituents. It may be modeled in terms of information systems, containing regulatory loops. Goal settings for these may be fixed, as in “lower” animals, or governed by internal adaptive supervisory systems freely selecting from alternative r...

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES To explore Singapore hospice nurses' perspectives of spirituality and spiritual care. DESIGN A descriptive, cross-sectional design was used. BACKGROUND Spiritual care is integral to providing quality end-of-life care. However, patients often report that this aspect of care is lacking. Previous studies suggest that nurses' neglect of this aspect of care could be attribute...

CONTEXT Spirituality, religiosity, and spiritual pain may affect advanced cancer patients' symptom expression, coping strategies, and quality of life. OBJECTIVES To examine the prevalence and intensity of spirituality, religiosity, and spiritual pain, and how spiritual pain was associated with symptom expression, coping, and spiritual quality of life. METHODS We interviewed 100 advanced can...

One of the most crucial palliative care challenges is in determining how patients’ needs are defined and assessed. Although physical and psychological needs are commonly documented in patient’s charts, spiritual needs are less frequently reported. The aim of this review was to determine which explicit, longitudinal documentation of spiritual concerns would sufficiently affect clinical care to a...

Our literature review focuses on the emerging construct of ethical leadership and compares this construct with related concepts that share a common concern for a moral dimension of leadership (e.g., spiritual, authentic, and transformational leadership). Drawing broadly from the intersection of the ethics and leadership literatures, we offer propositions about the antecedents and outcomes of et...