Spirituality In Health Care

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Introduction

India is a country universally hailed for her spiritual heritage. Being secular the country gives freedom to people for the practice of rituals based on many faith and culture. Meeting the needs of such a unique population, in a true holistic sense, especially at the time of sickness is always challenging to health care workers.

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Health and spiritual care

Ancient health care systems in India proclaim the significance of acknowledging the presence of God or Energy in all living things. Ayurveda and homeopathic systems of medicine has identified the significance of holistic perspective in patient management. A well known French Jesuit priest and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, said “We are not human beings

It is the unifying life force that integrates the biological, psychological, and social components. It may include or exclude the religious components according to individual belief system (Baldacchino, 2011). It is less religious and more individualistic. According to Wilding (2007) spirituality gives meaning to life, provides hope, gives a reason to live and can influence

The Royal college of Nursing Guidelines(2014) and six core competences(Van Leeuwen and Cusveller,2004) specifies the tasks like handling one’s own beliefs, addressing spirituality, collecting spiritual assessment information, discussing and planning interventions, providing and evaluating spiritual care and integrating spiritual care into policy of the inpatient set up. It is a group of interventions that can act as a source of comfort, control of emotions, meaning to life and personal growth to patients who are confronted with chronic illness. It helps them to experience a sense of inner peace through God’s/higher power’s presence or finding rest in contact with nature (Van Leeuwen, 2013).Spiritual care is an emotionally sensitive,empathetic care of human “spirit” and not specific to religion.(Claire, Robert and