Spiritual Assessment and Counsel in Healthcare
Spiritual Assessment and Counsel in Healthcare
Table of Contents
Introduction to Spiritual Assessments
The holistic view of healthcare encompasses the “whole person”: the mind, body, and spirit of a human being. Psychotherapy helps heal the mind and keep it healthy. Proper nutrition, exercise, and medical support help to keep the body healthy and improve it. But what of the spiritual aspect as it relates to health and well-being? Let’s take a closer look at spirituality, what a spiritual assessment is, and how it can help improve health.
Is the Spiritual Aspect Important?
91% said they believed in God or a Universal Spirit |
83% reported that God is highly important in their lives |
79% of Americans said they believed spiritual faith can help people recover from disease |
63% felt that doctors should ask their patients about spiritual beliefs |
What is a Spiritual Assessment?
A spiritual assessment is necessary to find out if any beliefs could impact health. There are formal spiritual assessment tools, a few of which we will discuss later on, that help healthcare professionals in identifying patients’ spiritual needs. Assessment tools can also be used to see whether patients are experiencing spiritual distress. However, informally assessing patients’ spirituality by asking open questions about their spiritual beliefs and needs are also effective ways to determine patients’ spirituality. Let’s first take a look at the nature of spirituality and the areas that need to be addressed during a spiritual assessment.
What is Spirituality?
- It helps an individual discover a sense of meaning and purpose in life
- It provides a healthy sense of belonging
- It points us in the right direction when we're seeking to define and stick to our values
Studies support that spirituality helps prevent and heal disease. It also helps those who are enduring distress and disability.2
So, a spiritual assessment can help pinpoint areas in life that may help a person recover.
Spiritual Beliefs
Faith
Religion
Spiritual Needs
Spiritual Gifts
Spiritual Tools
Who Performs a Spiritual Assessment?
Family Physicians
Nurses
Other Healthcare Professionals
Other healthcare professions, most notably psychiatrists, psychologists, and addiction treatment specialists, also offer opportunities for spirituality to figure into more effective and successful treatments. For example, people see someone in these fields when they are feeling stressed or depressed. Research shows that a lack of spiritual beliefs can be linked to depression.3
Imbalance in a person’s spiritual needs is often seen in addiction treatment. It’s important for psychiatrists, psychologists, and addiction treatment professionals to address the spiritual issues because of their influence on mental health and recovery.
Spiritual Gifts Assessment Tool
- H: Hope, strength, comfort, and how patients deal with difficult times
- O: Organized religion - learning if patients are part of a religious community and how it helps them
- P: Personal spiritual beliefs and what practices patients find most helpful
- E: Effects on medical or end of life issues as they relate to the patients' spiritual resources, and if there are any specific spiritual practices that patients want included in their medical care
Spiritual Distress Assessment Tool
FICA Spiritual History Tool
The FICA tool is used for a clinical assessment of spirituality. The FICA spiritual assessment can be used as a guide for spiritual history by framing questions rather than relying on a checklist. Therefore, the FICA tool guides conversations between the healthcare professional and the patient.
- Faith and belief: finding out the patients' spiritual beliefs and what gives their life meaning
- Importance: discovering how spiritual beliefs are used in dealing with illness
- Community: learning how patients are involved in a spiritual or religious community
- Address in Care: asking how they would like their healthcare professionals to address these spiritual issues in the healthcare process
How Does a Spiritual Assessment Improve Healthcare?
- The introduction of spirituality in the doctor-patient relationship can help build trust and understanding, which broadens the scope of the doctor-patient relationship and increases its effectiveness.
- A spiritual assessment can help reveal spiritual or emotional challenges affecting mental and physical health.
- Recognizing and handling spiritual issues may teach how to tap into an effective source of coping and healing.
- Spirituality can help provide comfort during times of illness and can also improve quality of life.
If spirituality is an important part of your life, J. Flowers Health Institute will include spirituality in your care. Because findings support that attention to the spiritual aspects of care can lead to better outcomes, our healthcare professionals can perform a spiritual assessment and attend to your spiritual concerns during treatment.