Spirituality Assessment Tools

Spirituality Assessment Tools
Healthcare systems have embraced spiritual care in recent years because it is an essential component of care. However, implementing spirituality in care is challenging due to a lack of proper framework and confidence among healthcare providers. As a result, several assessment tools have been discovered to evaluate the effectiveness of spiritual care. This discussion identifies and discusses four tools used to evaluate spirituality in nursing, including FICA, FAITH, SPIRITual, and HOPE.
FICA (Faith, Importance and Influence, Community, and Address) assists healthcare providers in asking open-ended questions about spirituality in a standard medical history (Borneman et al., 2010). The Faith component of this tool inquires whether a patient holds certain religious beliefs that can help them overcome stress and their health conditions. The second component focuses on the importance of religious beliefs to patients’ lives and their healthcare choices. The community component focuses on the spiritual group a patient belongs to and the importance of members of that spiritual group to the patient. The last component (Address in Care) focuses on how healthcare providers can support patients’ spirituality. This spirituality evaluation tool has several advantages. It is concise, invites spiritual conversation, and is memorable and relevant (Blaber et al., 2015). Besides, a validation study showed that the model is credible. On the other hand, FAITH is a simple patient-centered guideline that healthcare providers can use when taking a spiritual history in healthcare practices (Blaber et al., 2015). This tool addresses the role of spiritual practices like meditation and prayers in clients’ lives and during crises.
The SPIRITual spirituality evaluation tool is another tool used in nursing practice. Dr. Maugans designed the tool in 1996 after surveying spirituality literature and based on personal experiences. The tool enables healthcare professionals to take spiritual histories. The designers recognized the importance of spirituality in primary care. The most distinct aspect of this tool is that it recognizes the differences in how individuals apply beliefs in their lives even when they belong to the same religion. Furth more, the tools prevent healthcare providers from assuming that all individuals of a particular religion/belief interpret situations the same way. Some people may have a poor understanding of certain beliefs that may not align with the religion they associate with.
Another commonly used spirituality assessment tool is HOPE. H stands for sources of hope, meaning, strength, peace, love, and connection (Anandarajah, 2001). O means organized religion and focuses on determining whether individuals belong to a particular religion. P stands for personal spirituality/practices that determine if clients have independent beliefs and values. E stands for the effects on healthcare and end-of-life situations. This aspect of the tool focuses on the effects of sickness on clients’ spirituality.
References
Anandarajah, G. (2001). Spirituality and Medical Practice: Using the HOPE Questions as a Practical Tool for Spiritual Assessment. ResearchGate | Find and share research. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12134848_Spirituality_and_Medical_Practice_Using_the_HOPE_Questions_as_a_Practical_Tool_for_Spiritual_Assessment
Anandarajah, G. (2001). Spirituality and Medical Practice: Using the HOPE Questions as a Practical Tool for Spiritual Assessment. ResearchGate | Find and share research. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12134848_Spirituality_and_Medical_Practice_Using_the_HOPE_Questions_as_a_Practical_Tool_for_Spiritual_Assessment
Blaber, M., Jones, J., & Willis, D. (2015). Spiritual care: Which is the best assessment tool for palliative settings? ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282352971_Spiritual_care_Which_is_the_best_assessment_tool_for_palliative_settings
Borneman, T., Ferrell, B., & Puchalski, C. M. (2010). Evaluation of the FICA Tool for Spiritual Assessment. Science Direct. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885392410003258#
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