When a person has a life-threatening illness, many changes occur. These changes are more than just physical changes and include psychosocial, practical and spiritual consequences. If disease progresses, the impact of these changes intensifies. Nurses who are caring for patients with advancing disease must be able to provide appropriate interventions if they are to help individuals cope. This pa...

This integrative literature review aimed to characterize scientific articles on health-related quality of life - HRQoL - among patients with advanced cancer from national and international literature, and summarize those factors evidenced in the literature that contributed to the improvement or worsening of HRQoL among patients with advanced cancer. The search for materials was conducted in the...

The study was designed to assess the degree to which two sets of measures about chaplains' visits with patients predicted patients' perceptions that their spiritual/religious needs and their emotional needs were met by the chaplain. The first set consisted of seven items about the chaplain's demeanor during the visit. The second set measured patient satisfaction with seven aspects of the chapla...

The present study investigated the relationship between spiritual struggles and various types of psychopathology symptoms in individuals who had and had not suffered from a recent illness. Participants completed self-report measures of religious variables and symptoms of psychopathology. Spiritual struggles were assessed by a measure of negative religious coping. As predicted, negative religiou...

While there is increasing awareness that spirituality is a central dimension of human existence, there are few assessment instruments that operationalize spiritual strengths in a clinically useful manner. Further, instruments tailored specifically for African Americans, the population for whom spirituality may be most salient, have been almost completely lacking in the literature. Corresponding...

The purpose of the paper is to discuss means of assisting terminally ill patients in seeking for sources of meaning and hope, alongside the acknowledgment that their lifespan is short.Psycho-spiritual aspects make a substantial component patients suffering from incurable illness have to deal with. Evaluating and mapping the causes and expressions of psychological--spiritual suffering may assist...

background: in spite of a significant relation between spirituality and hope, happiness and life satisfaction, the effectiveness of spiritual interventions in the mentioned mental strengths has been less dealt with. the present study is conducted in order to determine the effectiveness of spiritual group intervention on the increase of hope, life satisfaction and happiness in women surviving fr...

BACKGROUND Attention to psycho-socio-spiritual needs is considered critical by patients with life-threatening illnesses and their caregivers. Palliative care interventions that address these needs--particularly spirituality--are lacking. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of an innovative program to address psycho-socio-spiritual needs in patients with life-threatening illnesses. DESIGN A gr...

BACKGROUND Although the General Medical Council recommends that United Kingdom medical students are taught 'whole person medicine', spiritual care is variably recognised within the curriculum. Data on teaching delivery and attainment of learning outcomes is lacking. This study ascertained views of Faculty and students about spiritual care and how to teach and assess competence in delivering suc...