Spirituality as an essential element of person-centered compassionate care: a pilot training program for clinicians

Spirituality is an essential aspect of person-centered compassionate care. Data demonstrate that the majority of patients with serious or chronic illness would like their clinicians to address their spirituality and to provide spiritual care but that the majority of clinicians do not provide such care. Reasons cited include lack of training. This paper pilots and evaluates the impact of spirituality training on providers’ self-reported awareness and ability to address patient spirituality and to provide compassionate care. Thirty-eight clinicians were trained and 18 completed the pre/post-training evaluation surveys. The data demonstrated increased self-reported ability to perform spiritual screening (pre-training mean of 2.59, SD = 1.33 increased to post-training mean of 4.41, SD = 0.51). The self-reported ability to identify a patient’s spiritual resources of strength improved from pre-training mean of 3.27 (SD = 1.16) to post-training mean of 4.53 (SD = 0.83). Ability to identify a patient’s spiritual distress improved from pre-training mean of 2.81 (SD = 1.22) to post-training mean of 0.31 (SD = 0.60). The self-reported ability to chart the patient’s spiritual strengths improved from mean of 2.69 (SD = 1.25) to post-training 4.31 (SD = 0.48). The self-reported ability to discuss patients’ spiritual strengths and/or distress with others in the healthcare team increased from mean of 2.76 (SD = 1.30) to post-training mean of 4.47 (SD = 0.51). The self-reported ability to identify appropriate interventions increased from pre-training mean of 2.59 (SD = 1.23) to post-training mean of 4.24 (SD = 0.44). There were also improvements in self-reported abilities to: (a) establish appropriate boundaries with patients; (b) apply the concept of compassionate presence to clinical care; (c) understand the role of spirituality in professional life; and (d) identify ethical issues in inter-professional spiritual care. We conclude that it is possible to train clinicians to address patients’ spiritual needs and provide discipline appropriate spiritual care.