A nurse on your unit asks you, “What do you say when a patient asks you to pray with them?” Or while you assist a colleague with repositioning a patient, you observe a missed opportunity to respond to the patient’s expression of spiritual struggle. What can you do when fellow nurses need knowledge about providing spiritually-sensitive care?
Dozens of studies document that spiritual care can learned. Even short in-services for clinicians can increase knowledge about spiritual care. A nurse who provides patient care can teach colleagues to give spiritual care in covert ways.
Model spiritual care. Social learning theory about how humans learn through observing and imitating others suggests that when other nurses watch—or hear your stories—about how you provide spiritual care, they’ll be learning about it. Heed the maxim: Be the change you want to see in the world. You can inspire learning when a colleague is intrigued or influenced by your spiritual caregiving.
Ponder these questions:
- Do I share my own experiences of spiritual care so that mutual learning or inspiration can occur?
- Am I vulnerable, empathic, and approachable to colleagues so that this sensitive topic of how to provide spiritual care can be safely and respectfully discussed?
- Do I provide affirmations to colleagues after I see or hear their spiritual care?
Evoke colleagues’ ideas about how to provide spiritual care.
- Use motivational interviewing techniques to facilitate collegial discussions: ask open questions, give affirming responses, prompt reflection, summarize what’s said and give attention to where change was referenced.
- Draw out colleagues’ thinking about how to provide spiritual care.
- Be respectful of these ideas. Note the negatives, then end with the positives about changing to improve spiritual care. Example: “It seems we agree that providing spiritual care might take time and be uncomfortable, yet I’m also hearing us say that if we did it more it’d become more comfortable and it could be done while we do other tasks, too.”
Collaborate to provide structured education. Seek out the educator, manager, chaplain, or shared governance team to identify how to provide spiritual care training.
- Create a bulletin board on the topic.
- Post an infographic in the nurses’ restroom
- Keep a reflection log or diary at the nurses’ station for anyone to write in an inspiring (or spiritually disturbing) patient encounter
- Tun a monthly group meeting for discussing spiritual care “incidents”
- recommend spiritual care training modules that already exist (e.g., the GW’s Institute for Spirituality & Health resources available at https://gwish.smhs.gwu.edu/resources/soerce-spirituality-and-health-online-education-and-resource-center).
Elizabeth Johnston Taylor, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a professor at Loma Linda University School of Nursing. Her scholarship addresses the intersection of spirituality, religiosity, health, and nursing.
This post is a shorter version of the FAQs in Spiritual Care column in the current issue of the Journal of Christian Nursing (JCN).
Free spiritual care resources
