부산대학교 도서관

With a diagnosis of cancer or other advanced disease, patients ask existential questions leading to spiritual distress, wondering what they have done to cause the disease and what their death will look like [39,5]. Health care providers (HCPs) can broaden their patient care from focusing only on the medical issues by understanding and incorporating patients’ spirituality into care planning and allowing space for spiritual and religious practices such as prayer or meditation. Several tools are available to assist HCPs in making spiritual assessments such as FICA (Faith, Importance/Influence, Community, Action in Care)[19] and HOPE (Hope, Organized religion, Personal spirituality/Practices, Effects on medical care) [11]. These acronyms are used to organize and structure open-ended questions during the spiritual assessment. HCPs may be hesitant to ask questions about religiosity and spirituality, concerned that they don’t have time, afraid that the patient may ask the same questions of them, or apprehensive that they don’t have the expertise to answer questions related to religion and spirituality [25,26]. HCPs generally will find that these conversations don’t take as much time as presumed and that hospital chaplains are available for referrals for those with deeper spiritual concerns and distress. Patients may not welcome questions about spirituality and religiosity during a routine office visit, but as they become more ill, or arrive at end of life (EOL), many welcome such inquiries [36]. While spiritual assessments do not change the course of the disease, they build trust between HCPs and patients and create a holistic care paradigm for patient physical and spiritual well-being, improving quality of life [6], defending against EOL hopelessness and despair and enhancing communication [4].