• Blanca J Gomez-Castillo, Rosemarie Hirsch, Hunter Groninger, Karen Baker, M Jennifer Cheng, Jayne Phillips, John Pollack, and Ann M Berger.
• Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC; Pain and Palliative Care Service, National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
• J Pain Symptom Manage. 2015 Nov 1; 50 (5): 724-9.

BackgroundSpirituality is a patient need that requires special attention from the Pain and Palliative Care Service team. This quality improvement project aimed to provide spiritual assessment for all new outpatients with serious life-altering illnesses.MeasuresPercentage of new outpatients receiving spiritual assessment (Faith, Importance/Influence, Community, Address/Action in care, psychosocial evaluation, chaplain consults) at baseline and postinterventions.InterventionInterventions included encouraging clinicians to incorporate adequate spiritual assessment into patient care and implementing chaplain covisits for all initial outpatient visits.OutcomesThe quality improvement interventions increased spiritual assessment (baseline vs. postinterventions): chaplain covisits (25.5% vs. 50%), Faith, Importance/Influence, Community, Address/Action in care completion (49% vs. 72%), and psychosocial evaluation (89% vs. 94%).Conclusions/Lessons LearnedImproved spiritual assessment in an outpatient palliative care clinic setting can occur with a multidisciplinary approach. This project also identifies data collection and documentation processes that can be targeted for improvement.Published by Elsevier Inc.

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