• Palliative medicine · Sep 2017

    Training hospital staff on spiritual care in palliative care influences patient-reported outcomes: Results of a quasi-experimental study.

    • Joep van de Geer, Marieke Groot, Richtsje Andela, Carlo Leget, Jelle Prins, Kris Vissers, and Hetty Zock.
    • 1 Department of Chaplaincy, MCL-Academy, Medical Centre Leeuwarden, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.
    • Palliat Med. 2017 Sep 1; 31 (8): 743-753.

    BackgroundSpiritual care is reported to be important to palliative patients. There is an increasing need for education in spiritual care.AimTo measure the effects of a specific spiritual care training on patients' reports of their perceived care and treatment.DesignA pragmatic controlled trial conducted between February 2014 and March 2015.Setting/ParticipantsThe intervention was a specific spiritual care training implemented by healthcare chaplains to eight multidisciplinary teams in six hospitals on regular wards in which patients resided in both curative and palliative trajectories. In total, 85 patients were included based on the Dutch translation of the Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool. Data were collected in the intervention and control wards pre- and post-training using questionnaires on physical symptoms, spiritual distress, involvement and attitudes (Spiritual Attitude and Involvement List) and on the perceived focus of healthcare professionals on patients' spiritual needs.ResultsAll 85 patients had high scores on spiritual themes and involvement. Patients reported that attention to their spiritual needs was very important. We found a significant ( p = 0.008) effect on healthcare professionals' attention to patients' spiritual and existential needs and a significant ( p = 0.020) effect in favour of patients' sleep. No effect on the spiritual distress of patients or their proxies was found.ConclusionThe effects of spiritual care training can be measured using patient-reported outcomes and seemed to indicate a positive effect on the quality of care. Future research should focus on optimizing the spiritual care training to identify the most effective elements and developing strategies to ensure long-term positive effects. This study was registered at the Dutch Trial Register: NTR4559.

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