Spiritual care is seldom part of end of life care for patients in the United States, despite the fact that it has been incorporated into American palliative care guidelines. This week, Michael Bouwman talks with Dr Tracy Balboni, who says the reason for this is a lack of education and training. She has found that even practitioners who are aware of the spiritual components of illness, and wish to provide spiritual care, find it difficult to sensitively acknowledge the spiritual needs of their patients. Dr Balboni says that as well as understanding the importance of spiritual factors, practitioners need to be trained in taking spiritual histories, assessing for spiritual needs and working as part of a multi-disciplinary team that meets these needs. Dr Balboni stresses that spiritual care has been shown to improve quality of life for dying patients, and can be particularly helpful for patients who are unable to find acceptance and peace at the end of life, or believe that their religion requires them to continue to opt for aggressive treatments.
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