Question

As a hospital nurse, you fully understand the importance of spirituality in your practice. During your night shift assessments, patients frequently engage you in spiritual conversations that have a definite impact on their perception of treatment. Your current patient, a 71-year-old retired nurse, will undergo bilateral, above-the-knee amputations tomorrow morning in response to her gangrenous feet.

1. What are the elements of spirituality?

2. Describe how a nurse might pray with a patient.

Answer 1

1. In any healthcare setting nurses work in close approximation with the patients. Nurses are not only responsible for attending the physical needs of thd patient but also have a duty to take of care patient's mental wellbeing and spiritual needs.
Nurses play a major part in accessing the spiritual needs of the patient and taking care of those needs.
Some of the important elements of spirituality includes:

- believing in the higher power or God

- feeling connectedness to the higher power

- attaining knowledge about meaning or purpose to life and existence.
- transcendence

- progress and growth in life

2. Spirituality helps many patients to combat with their diseases. Spiritual prayers and other practices help the patient to gain positive energy, be more hopeful, be mentally strong.
Many a times nurses find themselves in situations where patients want the nurse to pray with them.
Some of the things that will help nurse with patient are :

- ask the patient about their prayer preferences.
- ask the patient about their thoughts and spiritual beliefs.

- nurse may silenty stand by patients side if the nurse is not familiar with patient's praying rituals

- always allow the patient to say his prayers by himself if possible

- be respectful to the patient's spiritual beliefs and praying customs

- make sure that you do not disturb the patient while praying and maintain an undistirbed, peaceful environment for praying