Now Is The Time: Cultural And Spiritual Assessments In Nursing

Now is the Time: Cultural and Spiritual Assessments in Patient Care

Nursing is one of the most trusted professions, which displays that we are doing an excellent job of treating patients, but we must stay active. Integrating spiritual and cultural assessments has been discussed for many years, but this has yet to be an integral practice in healthcare. Two nursing pioneers, Florence Nightingale and Jean Watson, addressed the need to treat the patient holistically. "Florence Nightingale emphasized the need for nurses to provide patient care encompassing physical, psychological, and spiritual components" (Minton et al., 2018, p. 174). Jean Watson developed the Care Theory model that contains ten elements for nurses to follow that establish care at the center of the patient. According to Riegel et al. (2018), these elements include the following:

Humanistic and altruistic values system; faith and hope; sensitivity to oneself and others; development of aid, trust and care relations; expression of positive and negative feelings and emotions; creative and individualized care process of troubleshooting; transpersonal teaching and learning; nurturing, protective and/or corrective, mental, physical, social and spiritual environment; assistance to human needs and existential-phenomenological and spiritual forces. (p.

Once understood, start with the assessment, and the planning begins. After the plan is determined, place it into action. The crucial step is to take your findings and apply them to the holistic care of the patient. As nurses, we must treat each patient individually with the best care possible. We are not providing patient-centered care if we do not collect their cultural and spiritual assessments. Now is the time to up the ante on cultural and spiritual assessments by researching, applying the information, and placing it into