Screening For Spiritual Struggle

A growing body of research documents the harmful effects of religious or spiritual struggle among patients with a wide variety of diagnoses. We developed a brief screening protocol for use in identifying patients who may be experiencing religious/spiritual struggle, as well as patients who would lik...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe journal of pastoral care & counseling Vol. 63; no. 1-2; pp. 4.1 - 412
Main Authors Fitchett, George, Risk, James L
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.01.2009
Subjects
Chaplains
Health care
Religious aspects
Screening
Spiritual assessment
Spirituality
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Summary:A growing body of research documents the harmful effects of religious or spiritual struggle among patients with a wide variety of diagnoses. We developed a brief screening protocol for use in identifying patients who may be experiencing religious/spiritual struggle, as well as patients who would like a visit from a chaplain. We describe the results of a pilot study in which non-chaplain healthcare colleagues administered the screening protocol to patients admitted to an acute medical rehabilitation unit. The protocol identified 7% of the patients as possibly experiencing religious/spiritual struggle. Follow up spiritual assessments by the chaplain confirmed religious/spiritual struggle in all but one of these patients and also identified additional cases of religious/spiritual struggled not identified by the protocol.NB In addition to areas for future research, the authors describe how using a protocol to screen patients for religious/spiritual can make important contributions to spiritual care. Adapted from the source document.
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ISSN:1542-3050