Spiritual care training is needed for clinical and non-clinical staff to manage patients’ spiritual needs

ABSTRACTAs health-care moves towards a more person-centred approach, spiritual care has become more important in patients’ care. Recent evidence shows positive associations between both recognizing and addressing patient spiritual needs and health outcomes. Thus, we conducted a cross-sectional survey to determine levels in understanding of patients’ spiritual needs and spiritual care among clinical and non-clinical staff working with people with chronic and terminal conditions. We administered an adapted version of the Royal College of Nursing online Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale (SSCRS) to hospital and community-care staff. In total, 437 of 2845 eligible staff (15%) responded to the survey. Most participants agreed that spiritual care is fundamental to health care (n = 322, 88%) and that care-giving organizations should provide support for dealing with patients’ spiritual needs (n = 311, 85%). Dementia care staff encountered patient spiritual needs most often (p = 0.0001). While participan...