As the United States becomes more diverse, healthcare providers increasingly encounter religious and cultural diversity while planning and providing care. With the move toward a more holistic and integrative form of care and a rejection—on at least some level— of today’s technology-driven healthcare environment, spirituality occupies a prominent place in the vocabulary (and the profession) of contemporary healthcare providers.
Currently, there is a widespread belief that healthcare providers, especially nurses and physicians, should be competent in assessing their clients’ spiritual needs, but in reality this is not the case. While many healthcare providers have been trained to assess and care for the physical, psychological, emotional, social, and cultural aspects of a client, many have not been adequately trained to deal with the spiritual aspect of care. As different approaches to assessing spirituality are incorporated into a clinical setting, a variety of spiritual assessment tools provide a means for obtaining a deeper understanding of an individual’s spiritual perspective (Burkhardt & Nagai-Jacobson, 2016).
Many professionals feel uncomfortable assessing a client’s spiritual beliefs, others believe they lack time to provide spiritual care, while others believe that developing an instrument to assess a client’s spiritual needs is difficult because of the metaphysical nature of the elements of spirituality (Brush & Daly, 2000; Draper & McSherry, 2002; Rushton, 2014).
No universal agreement exists about the definition of spirituality, and the concept can differ among both clients and healthcare providers (Brush & Daly, 2000; Govier, 2000; Rushton, 2014). This can make spiritual care and spiritual assessment difficult.
In an effort to follow the mandates of regulatory and accrediting bodies as well as a desire to honor their own values and provide the best possible care to clients, healthcare professionals increasingly recognize that clients want a holistic approach to their care.
This holistic approach to care involves assessing a client’s spiritual beliefs. The influence of the New Age movement has also tapped into a deep need for the spiritual, and more and more people— clients and healthcare professionals alike—sense that life needs a source of purpose and direction. The role of today’s healthcare professional is to “hear the patient into speech, to be a midwife of the spirit” (O’Connor, 2001, p. 38). However, health care professions can also benefit from a focus on spirituality. These professions are physically, mentally, and emotionally draining. For health care professionals to be effective in assessing the spirituality and effective as a healing presence for patients and family members, their spirit must be nurtured as well (Gerber, 2011).
While the information presented herein offers some guidelines for effective spiritual assessment, planning, and implementation, it is important to remember that no single approach to spiritual care and spiritual assessment is likely to meet all the needs of all clients. When discussing the process of spiritual assessment, it is important to be respectful of a broad range of world and religious views and to avoid a one-size-fits-all perspective (Burkhardt & Nagai-Jacobson, 2016; Draper & McSherry, 2002).