Spiritual Needs Assessment and Reflection

Answer

Spiritual Needs Assessment and  Reflection

Introduction

During healthcare dispensation, healthcare practitioners encounter a myriad of patients and their families who harbor distinct ethics, beliefs, values and religious and spiritual perspectives. In our hospital, we deal with patients from different spiritual and cultural backgrounds necessitating assessment to gain an understanding of their spiritual and religious needs and their healthcare roles (Timmins & Caldeira, 2017). With a clear understanding of the patient’s spiritual and religious needs and beliefs, a healthcare practitioner can offer them effective spiritual, mental, emotional and physical treatment (Aaron & Phelps, 2012). In this paper, I interviewed a cancer patient recuperating after a series of chemotherapy sessions. This paper seeks to analyze the interviewee’s spiritual and religious needs, experience from the interview, any future alterations to the interview process and barriers to the interview with their respective solutions.

Transcript

What are your Religious Affiliation and its Roles

I am a Seventh Day Adventist church member. The Adventist church plays a major role in my life because we are taught how to live well and develop a close connection with God. The church acts as a family of God who creates a strong bond between church members. Additionally, church members have continually prayed for me and encouraged me even though this journey of fighting cancer.

What are Some of Your Personal Spiritual Beliefs and Practices that you Term Paramount in Your Life?

According to my religion, we consider physical health as key to spiritual growth. Therefore, people are advocated to engage in practices that nurture physical health such as a good diet and physical exercise. Personally, I uphold these beliefs but also believe that besides the diet God plays a major role in keeping us healthy.

How do these Beliefs Influence Your Health Decisions?

The beliefs have a great impact on my health decisions. Based on the call to maintain physical health to achieve spiritual nourishment, I always seek medical attention whenever I feel unwell. This helped in early detection of throat cancer since I went to the hospital for a check-up immediately I felt something was not well. Similarly, I believe that God gave me life for a reason and I will fight to live on until He says my work on earth is done

How does your Current Situation Impact on your Potential to Engage in Spiritually Nourishing Things?

My current health issue has been on bed rest or in the hospital most of the time. I cannot go to church anymore, and I miss the discussions we hold there. However, I get visitations from members of my church which makes me feel the presence of God each moment of my life. I also have a bible study culture which has made my spiritual nourishment grow stronger now that I have more time to connect with God.

Is There Anything a Doctor can do to Aid Your Access to Spiritual Resources that are Helpful?

Praying for me when I am in deep pain and cannot alter a word of God and having my pastor and elders of the church come in often to give me words of encouragement. I would also want the doctor to keep my bible and songbook close to my bed whenever I am in the hospital so that I can read words of the springs of living waters.

Interview Analysis

Interviewee

I decided to choose a close family friend suffering from a terminal illness. The patient, a happy 27-year-old man, was diagnosed with stage 2 throat cancer and with a series of chemotherapy sessions, he had now gained stability. I chose him because of his will to fight to be alive which could only be because he has a cause.

What Went Well

On the said interview date, I arrived at the patient’s home around 2.30 PM. I was awaited by both him and his sister who acted as his home caregiver. I found him in a cheerful mood, and he was happy to have me checking on him, and our communication was not significantly altered. Secondly, I know the patient as a close family relative which made him comfortable with my interview thus giving honest responses to the questions I asked as he was not feeling probed but considered them an item of concern from a friend (Amoah, 2015). The interview was majority successful with the client giving a detailed account of the questions tabled.

Barriers to the Interview and Future Changes

There were no major barriers in the interview process as we completed the entire assessment. However, we would have breaks now and then as the patient experienced painful episodes. Cancer patients undergo a lot of pain, and its management is as critical as its treatment (Lunder, Furlan, & Simonič, 2011). Therefore, the interview had to be paused to help him take pain medications, and once he was stable, we would proceed. As a result of these experiences, we took longer time than expected to conduct the full assessment. These challenges are inevitable and beyond human control. Therefore, in future, I would interview in parts. Various parts of the assessment tools would be filled in different days to maintain short sessions and avoid leaving the patient exhausted (Seddigh, Keshavarz-Akhlaghi, & Azarnik, 2016).

Tool’s Assistance in Providing Appropriate Interventions to Meet the Needs of Your Patient

The spiritual assessment tool used enabled the patient to express the spiritual desires he wanted met to nurture him spiritually and facilitate healthcare interventions. The tool can help me in providing the patient with appropriate interventions because I know his spiritual expectations at various times. Fulfilling these expectations will facilitate the patient’s comfortable stay during the period of treatment and speed his recovery (Plotnikoff, Wolpert, & Dandurand, 2018).

Impact of Illness and Stress on the Spiritual Concern and Needs of Your Interviewee

The patient’s spiritual concern and needs were increased significantly with the illness. The patient wanted every minute to be an intercessory one calling upon God for healing and relief from pain. He also demanded more spiritual attention especially from his pastor and elders who sometimes were not available (Taylor, 2015). However, amid all the pains and spiritual demands, I did not see any symptoms of stress from the patient who was awkwardly at peace with the situation. For instance, when I asked if the patient was afraid to die, he blatantly replied that he was not; his primary reason is that God had numbered his days and if he died, then God wanted him to rest for his work on earth was done (Harrison, 2010).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the role of religion and spiritual background in healthcare success is of great concern. This, the views of the patient about the subject were comprehensively analyzed to ensure he gets treatment tailored to meet these needs.