"Spiritual Care in Nursing: Christ Has No Hands but Ours", by Judith Anne Baker
This book is an attempt to make the history and process of the spiritual care component that nurses bring to the care of clients clear and comprehensible to nursing students and staff nurses alike. It grew out of nurses’ experiences in providing spiritual care, and in mentoring students as they learned how to provide such care in the clinical setting. Many of the examples come from students successfully and sometimes not so successfully taking the risk of asking about and seeking to understand the spiritual needs of patients they cared for.
Part I describes the long history of nurses linking needs of the spirit with needs of the body and mind, and helping people renew or establish relationships with significant persons and with a higher power. Much of this history is linked to the development of the Christian church, but nurses met spiritual needs before the advent of the church, and continue to do so even when they have no personal link to a faith community.
Part II is a discussion of what it is we mean by spirit, spirituality, and spiritual care. Spirituality is a popular term today and often is used with little definition of its meaning. Since the root word in spirituality is spirit, it seems wise to understand what a spirit is before defining spirituality or spiritual care. Also, because of the frequently identified link between spirituality and alternative and complementary therapies, and the current popularity of New Age philosophies, discussion of the main tenets of these topics is included.
In Part III the process of providing spiritual care is outlined. Using nursing process as the structure, the pieces of assessment, diagnosis, appropriate nursing interventions, and evaluation are discussed.
- - - From the Preface to Spiritual Care in Nursing
The text includes many examples of spiritual care needs and situations in which it was provided as well as questions for discussion related to the examples.
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