Spiritually Competent Practice in Health Care / Edition 1

by John Wattis, Stephen Curran, Melanie Rogers

Overview

This book will be of tremendous use to all healthcare professionals from physicians to nurses to social workers, rehabilitation therapists, and chaplains. The pathway taken here is a sensible and reasonable one, emphasizing a patient-centred approach that underscores the importance of spiritually competent care. The Editors do an excellent job of describing how to integrate spirituality into patient care for all of the different healthcare professionals. They also emphasize the importance of an evidence-based approach that is guided by research. This book provides superb guidelines that will be enormously helpful to every healthcare professional.

Harold G Koenig, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

This practical guide tackles the important issues of spirituality in health care, emphasising the role of organisations in developing a culture of leadership and management that facilitates spiritual care. Spirituality is a central part of holistic care that addresses physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of care in an integrated way.

The chapters are written by experts in their fields, pitched at the practitioner level rather than addressing ‘spirituality’ as a purely theoretical concept. Each one describes the realities of spiritually competent practice and show how it can be taught and put into practice in a variety of areas and settings, including

Undergraduate and Postgraduate education

Acute healthcare settings

Mental health

Primary care

End of Life Care

Creative organisations

Social services

Ideal for practitioners, educators, trainees and managers in nursing and healthcare, the book is also relevant reading for occupational therapists, physiotherapists, social workers and psychologists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138739116
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/22/2017
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Wattis has many years’ experience of working as an academic consultant in psychiatry for older people and in medical management, and has co-authored many research and educational papers in these areas. Over the last 20 years or so he has developed a particular interest in issues around spirituality in healthcare. He is co-author or co-editor of a number of books concerning aspects of old age psychiatry and management and leadership in medicine. He is a founder member of the Spirituality Special Interest Group (SSIG) in the School of Human and Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield, and is co-supervisor of a number of PhD students working in the field of Spirituality and Healthcare. A number of his recent publications, co-authored by members of the SSIG have been in the field of Spirituality and Healthcare.

Stephen Curran has many years’ experience as a consultant in old age psychiatry and has a particular interest in the biological and pharmacological aspects of psychiatry. He believes this needs to be accompanied by good, humane inter-personal care. He is an experienced teacher of old age psychiatry and supervisor of psychiatrists in training. He has published research, books, chapters and educational papers in the psychiatry of old age.

Melanie Rogers has worked as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner in Primary Care as well as running the MSc Advanced Nurse Practitioner course at the University of Huddersfield for many years. She is passionate about holistic care and working with patients to offer hope during times of illness and crisis. Her PhD focuses on Spirituality in Primary Care and she has spoken internationally and nationally about this. She is a founder member of the SSIG and British Association for the Study of Spirituality executive committee member. She was awarded the Queen’s Nurse title in 2008 for her commitment to patient care and education

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: What does spirituality mean for patients, practitioners and healthcare organisations?

Chapter 2: Spirituality in Western Multicultural Societies

Chapter 3: Spiritually competent practice in healthcare: what is it and what does it look like?

Chapter 4: How Two Practitioners Conceptualise Spiritually Competent Practice

Chapter 5: How Can Spirituality be Integrated in Undergraduate and Postgraduate Education

Chapter 6: Supporting the Practitioner.

Chapter 7: Spirituality in acute healthcare settings

Chapter 8: Spirituality and mental health

Chapter 9 Spirituality in the Primary Care Setting

Chapter 10 Spiritual Teamwork within End of Life Care

Chapter 11: Creative Organisations: spirituality and creativity in a health setting

Chapter 12: Using social role valorisation to make services sensitive to spiritual need

Chapter 13: A Vision for the future

Editorial Reviews

This book will be of tremendous use to all healthcare professionals from physicians to nurses to social workers, rehabilitation therapists, and chaplains. The pathway taken here is a sensible and reasonable one, emphasizing a patient-centred approach that underscores the importance of spiritually competent care. The Editors do an excellent job of describing how to integrate spirituality into patient care for all of the different healthcare professionals. They also emphasize the importance of an evidence-based approach that is guided by research. This book provides superb guidelines that will be enormously helpful to every healthcare professional.

Harold G Koenig, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

From the Publisher

Reviewer: Martha Scheckel, PhD, RN (The Catholic University of America)
Description: This book offers diverse paradigms to foster varied perspectives for practicing spiritually competent care. The authors provide unique elements of spirituality in healthcare by virtue of their scholarship in this area. These elements range from explicating relevant models and theories to integrating applicable narratives and poetry.
Purpose: This book conveys how to integrate spiritually competent practice in healthcare amid scientifically oriented milieus through bringing forth existing evidence about spirituality and spiritually competent care. The authors meet this objective with chapters that provide readers with knowledge and best practices about being and becoming spiritually competent practitioners.
Audience: The authors don't specifically state for whom the book is written. However, its content is geared toward undergraduate and graduate college students in healthcare programs. The book also has significant utility for healthcare practitioners and administrators. The latter will find the book useful for promoting systems-level change that promotes spiritually competent practice as a standard of practice. The authors and contributors are credible based on their scholarship about this topic, and should be applauded for addressing an often-neglected area of practice.
Features: The book provides a spectrum of ways for developing spiritually competent practice in varied settings regardless of disciplinary background. This approach is highly valuable in educational environments and healthcare systems that encourage interprofessional practice. The best aspects of the book are its varied approaches to examining the topics, which provide readers with a holistic understanding about spiritually competent practice. The quality of the authors' scholarship draws readers in. Shortcomings include a need to introduce readers to chapter content at the beginning of the book. The last chapter does this very well and may better fit at the beginning of the book. In addition, it is important for the authors to be stronger about how systematic research includes qualitative research.
Assessment: At first glance, this book has a lot of text without a lot of illustration, but the messages the authors send capture the attention of readers in a powerful way. Compared to other books about this topic, this one is more engaging because of its various topics, concise nature, and practicality. Readers will walk away with memorable ways to use the book and can return to it again and again as a useful reference.

Doody's Review Service