The forgotten spirit: integration of spirituality in health care
Mattison, D.
Nephrology News and Issues 20(2): 30-32
2006
ISSN/ISBN: 0896-1263 PMID: 16499171 Document Number: 600824
Health care technology has witnessed incredible advances and increasingly effective treatments for physical and psychological disorders, but the spiritual component of care is an intervention resource that often goes unseen, unaddressed, and underused for patients facing multiple challenges. State-of-the-art services must take a perspective that expands beyond a focus on the biological and psychological needs of patients to also integrate practice skills to address spiritual needs. Spirituality can provide valuable interventions to help maintain hope and stability in times of turbulence. If health care providers are to offer holistic care to patients, we must create an environment in which spirituality is competently explored and addressed. What do health care providers have to lose by integrating the spiritual, dimension into care delivery and accessing a powerful intervention that can make a positive difference to patients? How might patients benefit and what might we learn by asking a few simple, but profound, spiritual questions? What gives your life meaning? What is your greatest hope? What do you fear? What comforts or encourages you most? As you consider how spirituality fits into and benefits your practice you might find meaning in Viktor Frankl's words, "No cure that fails to engage our spirit can make us well".