According to me, spirituality is the conviction that there is a power greater than oneself. It also involves having faith in a force larger than oneself or any other person. In my role as a nurse, I behave myself ethically and responsibly and draw on these principles to enhance patient care, understanding, and compassion for others. Additionally, faith supports patients in managing stress, making important health decisions, and raising their overall level of living. In my role as a nurse, I gather spiritual histories in order to gain a deeper understanding of the patient’s spiritual and religious background and to choose the most suitable care.
Every patient has particular spiritual needs that may or may not be religious in nature. This request may be made explicitly or indirectly by the patient. The patient or their family might not even be aware that they are requesting spiritual support. Patients who are experiencing spiritual distress or their loved ones may express feelings of alienation, hopelessness, worry about the future, aimlessness, or belief in punishment (Selman et al., 2017). As a nurse, I am always conscious of the patient’s requirements, regardless of how I express them. If I’m not careful, they might miss these appeals for spiritual support.
I may incorporate the patient’s spiritual needs into their treatment plan as a nurse. As a part of a comprehensive care plan, I use connections, patient involvement, and physical therapy interventions. Initiatives for spiritual care are flexible, and the nurse and other members of the healthcare team can offer them in a variety of ways (O’Brien et al., 2018). The value of the patient is increased through honoring their spirituality, being present with them, developing a therapeutic relationship, and engaging in conversation. As a nurse, some spiritual initiatives I might use include praying with the patient, showing compassion, encouraging the person’s religious practice, attempting to find solutions to problems, promoting forgiveness, helping the patient identify self-expectations and determining whether those expectations are realistic, and promoting profound expression of emotions through communication skills (Selman et al., 2017).
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What would spirituality be according to your own worldview? How do you believe that your conception of spirituality would influence the way in which you care for patients?
It is critical for an organization’s performance to have effective nurse leaders and managers. Nurse leaders are frequently found on the clinical floor, where they supervise RNs and help with patient safety and advocacy (Post University, 2021). A nurse manager is frequently someone with decision-making authority and responsibility over large teams of nurses, who manages staff training, communicates with other managers, and employs evidence-based practice (Post University, 2021). Nurse managers and leaders must possess qualities such as patience, open-mindedness, compassion, and persuasiveness (Whitney, 2018). It would be difficult to be a strong leader or manager without a combination of these talents.
Our nurse manager would evaluate incident reports when I worked in postpartum. The nurse manager noticed an increase in the number of nurses reporting postpartum hemorrhages. So the nurse manager met with the nurse leaders to discuss what could be done. The nurse manager made the decision to use the post-partum bleeding scale. The nurse leaders were in responsibility of implementing and training the new scale, while the nurse manager examined the forms and incident reports to determine its efficacy.
Spirituality, in my opinion, is a belief in a power greater than oneself. Believing in a power bigger than oneself or any other human being is also required. As a nurse, I act ethically and responsibly, and I use my principles to improve care, comprehension, and human compassion. Furthermore, faith helps patients manage stress, make important health decisions, and improve their overall quality of life. As a nurse, I gather spiritual backgrounds in order to gain a better understanding of the patient’s spiritual and religious history and to provide the most suitable care.
Each patient has unique spiritual requirements that may or may not be religious. The patient may convey this requirement verbally or implicitly. The patient or family may not even realize they are asking for spiritual help. Spiritually distressed patients or their relatives may express a sense of disconnection, hopelessness, future apprehension, purposelessness, or belief in punishment (Selman et al., 2017). As a nurse, I am constantly aware of the patient’s needs, irrespective of conveying them. They may miss these requests for spiritual assistance if I am not attentive.
As a nurse, I can include the patient’s spiritual requirements into their treatment plan. I employ connections, patient involvement, and bodily therapeutic interventions as part of a complete plan of care. Spiritual care initiatives are adaptable, and the nurse and other healthcare team members may provide them in several ways (O’Brien et al., 2018). By respecting the patient’s spirituality and offering presence, building a therapeutic connection, and conversing with the patient gives value to the person. Saying a prayer with the patient, providing caring participation, fostering the person’s faith’s practice, trying to explore options to hurdles, boosting pardon, providing assistance to the patient in uncovering self-expectations and establishing whether those goals are achievable, and encouraging profound articulation of emotions with communication skills are all examples of spiritual initiatives I could employ as a nurse (Selman et al., 2017).
Although spiritual care is meant to help people, I frequently gain as a nurse. Interpersonal trust and a connection with the patient require high emotional intelligence. It’s important to realize that spirituality isn’t always theological care (Ross et al., 2018). Whereas the health care industry easily incorporates spirituality into therapy, spiritual care is essential in all sectors of operation. For the sake of our clients, we as caregivers must respect spiritual support, learn the required skills, and schedule time to satisfy these needs.
References
O’Brien, M. R., Kinloch, K., Groves, K. E., & Jack, B. A. (2018). Meeting patients’ spiritual needs during end‐of‐life care: A qualitative study of nurses and healthcare professionals’ perceptions of spiritual care training. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 28(1-2), 182-189. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14648
Ross, L., McSherry, W., Giske, T., Van Leeuwen, R., Schep-Akkerman, A., Koslander, T., Hall, J., Steenfeldt, V. Ø., & Jarvis, P. (2018). Nursing and midwifery students’ perceptions of spirituality, spiritual care, and spiritual care competency: A prospective, longitudinal, correlational European study. Nurse Education Today, 67, 64-71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2018.05.002
Selman, L. E., Brighton, L. J., Sinclair, S., Karvinen, I., Egan, R., Speck, P., Powell, R. A., Deskur-Smielecka, E., Glajchen, M., Adler, S., Puchalski, C., Hunter, J., Gikaara, N., & Hope, J. (2017). Patients’ and caregivers’ needs, experiences, preferences and research priorities in spiritual care: A focus group study across nine countries. Palliative Medicine, 32(1), 216-230. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269216317734954
Re: Topic 1 DQ 1
What would spirituality be according to your own worldview? How do you believe that your conception of spirituality would influence the way in which you care for patients?
In accordance to my own view of the world, my idea of spirituality is more along the lines of Pantheism, as I do not directly identify spirituality with a monotheistic perspective. For me, I feel most spiritual when I am outside enjoying all of nature and the feeling of oneness within this environment. This particular feeling follows me throughout my life and I often sense it as a feeling of strange coincidences with what I am feeling and seemingly random occurrences throughout my day that just feel too similar to be only coincidences. While this is not a highly specific spirituality that makes me feel most at peace within a religious house or structured practice, it comforts me and serves me well enough. Thus, this conception of spirituality is often the polar opposite of those of my patients. For my nursing practice, if my patients can find comfort in what could be the darkest period of their life from a religious source, regardless of what the exact source is, then that is good enough for me. Per Registered Nursing, “Each of these religions, among other things, has a unique set of beliefs and rituals that can, and do, impact on the client and the nurse-client relationship” (2019, para 3). Since I was not brought into nursing to push my perceptions of spirituality upon my patients and that is not what they need from me as their nurse. The most impactful thing I can do as someone’s nurse is come into the patient-nurse relationship with an open-mind and be willing to directly ask my patients about their religious and spiritual needs and how we can best include those in their medical care. Overall, I believe my best answer to this discussion post is that the influence my own spirituality, which differs from many others, has upon my nursing care is to be accepting of whatever may be someone else’s spiritual viewpoint.
Reference
Registered Nursing. (2019, Sept. 27). Religious and Spiritual Influences on Health. NCLEX-RN. Retrieved from https://www.registerednursing.org/nclex/religious-spiritual-influences-health/
Re: Topic 1 DQ 1
Spirituality is the belief in something greater than yourself, which guides your life and choices in such a way to keep one’s mind, body, and soul in harmony. It seems to me that when there is not a balance between the mind, body, and soul, that is when people begin to question spirituality and their meaning in life.As a nurse, I understand that there is more than just illness or disease, medications, treatments, etc. As a nurse, I treat every one of my patients as a whole. We have all heard of treating the patient as a whole, but what this means to me is not only following orders for medications and treatments related to their particular illness(s), it means when I am assessing my patient I am not only evaluating what I can measure and see, but what I cannot see as well. I am asking questions related to preferences such as religion, evaluating mood such as does the patient appear sad or depressed, does the patient have a sense of well being or of impending doom? Nurses are trained to look for the things you cannot see; I feel this is the most significant difference between nurses and doctors. Doctors are very black and white, and they look for illness based on symptoms and treat to cure or prolong life. Nurses look not only at the black and white but the grey areas as well, the unseen and the unmeasurable regions of a person’s mind, body, and soul. What would spirituality be according to your own worldview?
