(Simple • Direct • High-yield)
🧠 1. Core Concepts of Spirituality
According to the slides, spirituality includes four main constructs:
- Self-transcendence → connection beyond self
- Connectedness → with self, others, environment, higher power
- Faith → belief without physical proof
- Hope → inner motivation and future goal orientation
Other key terms:
- Spiritual Well-Being → sense of peace, purpose, fulfillment
- Religion → organized system of beliefs, worship practices
- Faith → can be religious or nonreligious (It can involve faith in oneself, in humanity, or in an ideal, and it focuses on an individual's inner life and personal growth. )
🧩 2. Spiritual vs. Religious Care
Religious Care | Spiritual Care |
Helps patients maintain worship practices & beliefs | Helps patients find meaning, purpose, connection, inner peace |
Patients benefit from both.
⚖️ 3. Spiritual Health Basics
- Represents balance (mind, body, spirit).
- Changes with life experiences, illness, growth.
🚨 4. Spiritual Distress
Definition: Impaired ability to experience meaning, purpose, or connection. (Occurs when your values and what is happening in life seem to conflict )
Common causes:
- Acute illness
- Chronic illness
- Terminal illness
- Near-death experiences
🧠 5. Nursing Process: Spiritual Health
🔍 Assessment
How to assess spirituality
Use presence, active listening, and faith history.
Tools include:
- FICA (Faith, Importance, Community, Address)
- SWB Scale
Key assessment categories
- Faith/Belief — ask about guidance sources, meaning of life
- Life & Self-Responsibility — how patient interprets illness
- Connectedness — ability to relate to self, others, higher power
- Culture — beliefs shaped by cultural identity
- Fellowship & Community — support systems
- Rituals & Practices — what gives structure in tough times
- Vocation — how illness affects spiritual expression
Quick Clinical Example
Jeff learns Victoria’s spirituality is connected to:
- Herself
- Her family
- Her faith in God
📋 Diagnosis (NANDA-Style)
Possible nursing diagnoses related to spirituality include:
- Anxiety
- Ineffective coping
- Hopelessness
- Powerlessness
- Complicated grief
- Spiritual distress
- Readiness for enhanced spiritual well-being
- Risk for impaired religiosity
🎯 Planning
A spiritual care plan must have:
- Realistic, individualized goals
- Patient-defined priorities
- Collaboration (e.g., pastoral care)
🤲 Implementation
Health Promotion
- Establish presence (listening, trust, attention)
- Create a supportive healing relationship
- Mobilize hope
- Help patient interpret suffering
- Assist with spiritual resources
Acute Care
- Support systems
- Diet therapies
- Ritual support
Restorative / Continuing Care
- Prayer
- Meditation
- Supporting grief work
Example from the case
- Jeff uses therapeutic communication
- Encourages prayer
- Supports family integrity
🔎 Evaluation
Ask directly:
- “Are we helping you?”
- “Do you feel supported?”
Use planning-phase goals as measurable standards.
📝 6. Quick Quiz
Question 1: Religion vs Spirituality
Religious care = helping maintain belief systems & worship practices.
Question 2: Best way to assess/evaluate spirituality
Determine the patient’s perceptions and belief system.
🎯 High-Yield Exam Tips
- Spiritual = meaning + purpose; Religious = organized belief system.
- Spiritual distress increases with serious illness.
- Assessment MUST include faith history (FICA).
- Presence > fixing. “Being with” is therapeutic.
- Goals are patient-centered and individualized.
- Pastoral care is always a team resource.