CONTEXT The National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care includes spiritual care as one of the eight clinical practice domains. There are very few standardized spirituality history tools. OBJECTIVES The purpose of this pilot study was to test the feasibility for the Faith, Importance and Influence, Community, and Address (FICA) Spiritual History Tool in clinical settings. Correlates...

Palliative care practitioners are now better able than ever before to ameliorate end-of-life symptom distress. What remains less developed, however, is the knowledge base and skill set necessary to recognize, assess, and compassionately address the psychosocial, existential, and spiritual aspects of the patient's dying experience. This review provides an overview of these areas, focusing primar...

This study sought to understand the context in which Psycho-Spiritual Integrative Therapy (PSIT), a group intervention, promotes varying degrees of spiritual growth and quality of life change in breast cancer survivors. A secondary aim was to explore the relationship between spiritual well-being (SWB) and Quality of Life (QL) in PSIT participants. A qualitative, multiple case analysis was under...

This study examined the relationship between multiple dimensions of religious involvement and transitions of tobacco smoking abstinence, persistence, cessation and relapse over 9-10 years of follow-up in a national sample of adults in the United States. Using data provided at baseline and follow-up, participants were categorized as non-smokers, persistent smokers, ex-smokers, and relapsed smoke...

BACKGROUND Although prior research indicates that religious and spiritual coping is associated with positive health outcomes, few studies have examined religious and spiritual coping among patients with emphysema. OBJECTIVE To describe the utilization of religious and spiritual coping and its relationship to quality of life among patients with emphysema, in a 2-year longitudinal follow-up st...

From drawing to sculpture, poetry to journaling, and dance to music and song, the arts can have a major impact on patients' spiritual well-being and health. The arts empower patients to fulfill the basic human drive to create and give patients a sense of possibility. Through creative expression, patients regain a feeling of wholeness, individually and as part of the larger world. Although spiri...

OBJECTIVE Although enhanced spiritual well-being has been linked to positive mental health outcomes among family caregivers of cancer patients, little is known regarding predictors of spiritual well-being in this population. The current study aimed to examine caregiving experiences as predictors of change in family caregivers' spiritual well-being during the initial months following the patient...

BACKGROUND The importance of spirituality in coping with a terminal illness is becoming increasingly recognised. We aimed to assess the relation between spiritual well-being, depression, and end-of-life despair in terminally-ill cancer patients. METHODS 160 patients in a palliative care hospital with a life expectancy of less than 3 months were interviewed with a series of standardised instru...

Spirituality as an emerging area of academic study within health care has experienced rapid development over a 20year period with mounting evidence that spiritual support yields improvements in a variety of physical and psychological health outcomes (Koenig 2012). The scientific development in the field of health sciences and its ethical and moral foundations leave no space for doubt with regar...

BACKGROUND A majority of people in Western Europe and the USA die in hospitals. Spiritual and existential care is seen to be an integral component of holistic, compassionate and comprehensive palliative care. Yet, several studies show that many nurses are anxious and uncertain about engaging in spiritual and existential care for the dying. The aim of this study is to describe nurses' experience...