Spiritual Care

What can I do?

Recognise that spiritual care is part of everyone’s role.

Spiritual care is a shift to meaningful experiences and to connection. Remember:

• appropriate touch, eye contact, and a welcoming and unhurried approach to conversation
• being sensitive to and respectful of the spiritual and religious needs of people in your care and their families
• offering opportunities for a connection to nature, to music, to conversation, to art, to memories or through expressions of self in terms of diet and clothing
• providing opportunities for discussion with Chaplaincy staff
• looking for activities and roles that give people purpose; at end-of-life it may be appropriate to offer a therapeutic life review or dignity therapy.

 
Sometimes people (older people in particular) do not have the language to know who to talk to or even to ask for help. Ask the person 'Would like to speak to someone / a Chaplain?'

The ConnecTo Tool can be useful but requires some training.

Other tools you can use:

• McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire (MQOL)
• Palliative Outcome Scale (POS).

What can I learn?

Access the National Guidelines for Spiritual Care in Aged Care; some implementation tools can be accessed freely.

Check out the Fact Sheets and Resources from Meaningful Ageing Australia

Read the Joint Position Statement (466kb pdf) from Meaningful Ageing Australia and Palliative Care Australia about the importance of spiritual care in palliative and end-of-life care (May 2017)

Read this piece in The Conversation (May 2016) Spiritual care at the end of life can add purpose and help maintain identity

Read Muslim Aged Care - A practical guide for service providers (2MB pdf)

Watch these short videos:

• The place of spiritual care at the end of life
• The contribution of pastoral care
• Care of people from different faiths
• Introduction to spiritual care in aged care & the National Guidelines
• The five domains of spiritual care found in the National Guidelines for Spiritual Care in Aged Care.

What can my organisation do?

Consider implementing the nine principles from Holyoke P, Stephenson B. Organization-level principles and practices to support spiritual care at the end of life: a qualitative study. BMC Palliat Care. 2017 Apr 11;16(1):24.

Encourage all staff to think about spiritual care as part of daily care.

Remember that the physical environment can be an important source of spiritual comfort.

Support and/or provide opportunities for spiritual reflection, education and training.

The quality and extent of spiritual care should be in line with the training provided to staff and the development of competencies.

Consider introducing spiritual screening and spiritual assessment.

Review the implementation documents from the National Guidelines for Spiritual Care in Aged Care.

Develop and keep current a list of people who provide spiritual care (eg, chaplains, spiritual care practitioners).

Ensure that the practice of spiritual care practitioners within the organisation respects the Spiritual Care Australia Standards of Practice (2013) (1.23MB pdf).

In staff recruitment processes, consider including spiritual competencies in role descriptions.