Question

What spiritual considerations surrounding a disaster can arise for individuals, communities, and health care providers? Explain your answer in the context of a natural or manmade disaster. How can a community health nurse assist in the spiritual care of the individual, community, self, and colleagues?

Answer 1

Ans) Compassion is a language that is understood across cultures, religions, and nations. Being compassionate and empathetic is a basic responsibility of health care providers responding to disasters.

- Compassion and empathy cannot be operationalized unless providers show culturally competent, ethically right, and spiritually caring behavior.

- In addition to being accepting of cultures other than their own, providers must read literature and familiarize themselves with the predominant cultures of the affected population. Ethically right decision making is essentially an act of balancing the risks and benefits to the entire society. Spiritual care is an important dimension of total health, and therefore recognition and resolution of the spiritual needs of disaster victims is an essential role of health care providers.

- Disaster management is teamwork and therefore requires that health care providers draw on the expertise and support of other team members; coordinating efforts with local religious, social governmental organizations, and NGOs to deal with the intangible effects of the cultural and spiritual impact of a disaster and to prevent further demoralization of the affected community is imperative.

- Disasters occur, and the only thing that can ameliorate their devastating effects is to improve disaster preparedness and respond collectively and courageously to every catastrophic event.

- Assistance by community health nurse:

First the nurse needs to understand that at such vulnerable time most people will have a crisis in their faith and may feel abandoned by their God. They may also feel betrayed and find it hard to pray or show any gratitude specially if they experience a loss of life of a loved one.

- Despair, loss of hope, and a prolonged state of hopelessness as well as the repetitive questions of “why me will last for days if not weeks. Let’s face it, it’s not easy losing all we worked for, it’s even harder loosing a loved one either by a natural disaster or a manmade disaster. Luckily, there’s the holistic care philosophy; it’s a method to ensure care for all parts of a patient.

- Holistic nurses are those that recognize and treat everyone differently and are often described by patients as those nurses that “truly care.”