Catching the Concept of Spiritual Care
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Essex Cancer Network Catching the concept of spiritual care This document is dedicated to Reverend Peter O'Driscoll a dear colleague and friend who spent many hours working to ensure spiritual care within health care remains high on the local agenda Peter O'Driscoll 1949-2009 “Never forget you are unique, for you are Stardust” Contents Welcome 4 Introduction 5 The Baha'i faith 7 Buddhism 8 Christianity 10 Hinduism 12 Jainism 14 Judaism 16 Islam 18 Spiritualism 20 Sikhism 22 Zoroastrainism 24 Chinese culture and religion 25 Christian Scientists 27 Jehovah’s Witnesses 29 Mormons / Latter-Day Saints 31 The society of Friends or Quakers 33 Rastafarianism 34 Romany Origin 36 Atheism 38 Information on Ramadan and 'Id-Ul-Fitr 40 Emergency Marriages in Hospital 45 Acknowledgments 47 Appendices A. Spiritual Assessment Tool 48 B. Spiritual, Religious, Pastoral & Cultural care guidelines 50 C. Spiritual Care Provider Contacts 56 References and Bibliography 57 Essex Cancer Network Catching the concept of spiritual care 3 Welcome Welcome to this first Essex Cancer Network Not all persons who we care for in our edition of Catching the Concept of professional roles will have religious needs but will Spiritual Care. I hope that you, the user, will find have, to a varying degree, relative to the it both useful and valuable as a resource. Without diagnostic challenges they face, spiritual needs. doubt your experience of using it will assist in improving future editions. In 2004 NICE published “Improving Supportive and Palliative Care for Adults with Cancer - the “Your Guide to the NHS” (DOH 2000) makes this Manual.” This document recognises certain key commitment to patients: issues in delivering effective spiritual and existential support to people experiencing illness “NHS staff will respect your privacy and dignity. or treatment or who are approaching death. They will be sensitive to, and respect, your religious, spiritual and cultural needs at all times.” These are: It is hoped that Catching the Concept of • Listening to the patient's experience and the Spiritual Care will assist all staff to deliver on this questions that may arise important aspect of holistic patient/client care. • Affirming the patient's humanity One misunderstanding that subverts the quality of spiritual / pastoral care provision is the equating • Protecting the patient's dignity, self worth and of religious and spiritual need. Nurse academic identity Nancy Goddard (2000) writing in “Journal of Advanced Nursing” states that: • Ensuring that spiritual care is offered as an integral part of an holistic approach to health, “Spirituality encompasses all aspects of human encompassing psychological, spiritual, social being and is a means of experiencing life. Faith, and emotional care, and within the framework on the other hand, is related to religious of the patient's beliefs or philosophy of life. expression and may or may not be a necessary component of spirituality.” (Salladay & McDonnell I hope that catching the Concept of Spiritual Care 1989). will assist all of us to address these key issues. The distinction between spirituality and religiosity Peter O'Driscoll MA is an important consideration since its absence is Trust Coordinating Chaplain partially responsible for the conceptual confusion Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS and ambiguity that permeates discussion of these Foundation Trust concepts. Getting that distinction right is vitally and Member of the SECN NICE Spirituality Group. important. 4 Essex Cancer Network Catching the concept of spiritual care Essex Cancer Network Catching the concept of spiritual care 5 Introduction Spirituality and Religion Reverend Peter O'Driscoll Whenever we are faced with the consideration of spirituality and religion we come up against This resource is designed to enable all problems of definition and understanding. Most staff to provide appropriate holistic care people who don't think too much about spirituality and religion confuse the two. for our patients and their relatives and / or significant others. We do care very In the “Journal of Family Practice”, Clayton well for the physical and emotional (1999) argues for an inclusive understanding of needs of our patients. spirituality, one that sees spirituality as a broader concept than religion. He states: “Religion may be one expression of spirituality, but certainly not However research has shown (O'Driscoll all spiritual persons are religious” (p.1-2). Clayton 2001) that nurses and clinical support goes on to quote Remen (1988) who suggests workers feel less knowledgeable and that the “spiritual is that realm of human experience to which religion attempts to connect skilled in providing for peoples spiritual us through doctrine, ritual and practice. needs. Sometimes it succeeds sometimes it fails. Religion is a bridge to the spiritual, but the spiritual lies This resource, together with the beyond religion.” Network's Catching the Concept of Fowler (1981) in his book “Stages of Faith” set Spiritual Care educational course, seeks out a paradigm of spiritual development across to address this. the life span from 3 to 84 years. Fowler (1981 p4) described faith as “not always religious in its content or context.” His view is that faith has to do with finding coherence in life, seeing oneself in relation to others “against a background of shared meaning and purpose.” Hay and Nye (1998) offer a theory of spirituality that includes religion but is not limited to it. Their book is based on a three-year research project looking at Children's spirituality. They believe that spirituality is an inborn aspect of human nature and the result of evolutionary development. 6 Essex Cancer Network Catching the concept of spiritual care O'Murchu (2000) states, “Our spiritual story as a Rabbi Julia Neuberger (1998 p11) asserts “We are human species is at least 70,000 years old; by actually whole people and we need to be comparison, the formal religions have existed for recognised as whole people. Hence training, and a mere 4,500 years” (p. vii). Jaspers (1969) makes then practice, for health professionals should a similar point when he refers to the almost recognise that wholeness and respond to it, simultaneous emergence of religious systems in including recognising our need for spiritual care.” China, India, Persia, Palestine, and Greece. Dossey (1998 p37) writes, “We may specialise O'Murchu makes clear a distinction he wishes to and sub specialise, but our patients don't. They make between the worlds “official religious come to us a whole, not as a body cut off from systems”, e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, their soul and spirit. And it is the whole to which Christianity, Islam etc. He states, “Spirituality the nurse responds, if she deserves to be called a concerns an ancient and primal search for meaning nurse instead of a technician.” that is as old as humanity itself… and belongs - as an inherent energy - to the evolutionary unfolding Harold Koenig of Duke University (2000, p.1708) of creation itself” (p. vii). has written, “Patients want to be seen and Spirituality is a universal human experience, albeit treated as whole persons not as disease. A whole one that manifests at different stages of person is someone whose being has physical, development and sophistication. To be human is to emotional, and spiritual dimensions. Ignoring any be a spiritual being. However not all humans are of these aspects of humanity leaves the patient religious or have religious needs. In considering feeling incomplete and may even interfere with spirituality or spiritual care in a healthcare context it healing.” is important to bear this distinction in mind. It is an obvious fact that not everyone who uses our services is religious or has religious needs. What perhaps has been less obvious to us is that everyone is a human and therefore spiritual being with spiritual need. When we recognise and respond to that spiritual need we are offering better holistic care. Dossey & Keegan (1989 p.4) defined holism as “the view that an integrated whole has a reality independent of and greater than the sum of its parts.” This is echoed in Bradshaw (1994, xix) “A way of thinking, stressing that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and cannot be broken down into parts and analysed.” Essex Cancer Network Catching the concept of spiritual care 7 The Bahá'í Faith The Bahá'í Faith was founded by Bahá'u'lláh (1817-1892). The followers of the faith regard him as the most recent in the line of Messengers of God that stretches back beyond recorded time and include Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ and Muhammad. The central theme of Bahá'u'lláh's message is that humanity is one single race and that the day has come for its unification in one global society. God, Bahá'u'lláh said, has set in motion historical forces that are breaking down traditional barriers of race, class, creed, and nation and that will, in time, give birth to a universal civilisation. The principal challenge facing the peoples of the earth is to accept the fact of their oneness and to assist the processes of unification. One of the purposes of the Baha'i Faith is to help make this possible. A worldwide community of some five million Baha'is, representative of most of the nations, races and cultures on earth, is working to give Bahá'u'lláh's teachings practical effect. “The way of life which Baha'is seek to cultivate is one that encourages personal development. Daily prayer and meditation free the soul from conditioned patterns and open it to new possibilities. Joining in projects with peoples of diverse backgrounds breaks down traditional prejudices.” The Temple of The Temple Bahá'í. Haifa, Israel 8 Essex Cancer Network Catching the concept of spiritual care Special Considerations Last Offices There are no special considerations to be taken Routine last offices are appropriate.