• Allison Kestenbaum, Michele Shields, Jennifer James, Will Hocker, Stefana Morgan, Shweta Karve, Michael W Rabow, and Laura B Dunn.
• Doris A. Howell Palliative Care Service, University of California, San Diego Health, San Diego, California, USA.
• J Pain Symptom Manage. 2017 Nov 1; 54 (5): 707-714.

ContextSpiritual care is integral to quality palliative care. Although chaplains are uniquely trained to provide spiritual care, studies evaluating chaplains' work in palliative care are scarce.ObjectivesThe goals of this pre-post study, conducted among patients with advanced cancer receiving outpatient palliative care, were to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of chaplain-delivered spiritual care, utilizing the Spiritual Assessment and Intervention Model ("Spiritual AIM"), and to gather pilot data on Spiritual AIM's effects on spiritual well-being, religious and cancer-specific coping, and physical and psychological symptoms.MethodsPatients with advanced cancer (N = 31) who were receiving outpatient palliative care were assigned based on chaplains' and patients' outpatient schedules, to one of three professional chaplains for three individual Spiritual AIM sessions, conducted over the course of approximately six to eight weeks. Patients completed the following measures at baseline and post-intervention: Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale, Steinhauser Spirituality, Brief RCOPE, Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual (FACIT-Sp-12), Mini-Mental Adjustment to Cancer (Mini-MAC), Patient Dignity Inventory, Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (10 items), and Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory.ResultsFrom baseline to post-Spiritual AIM, significant increases were found on the FACIT-Sp-12 Faith subscale, the Mini-MAC Fighting Spirit subscale, and Mini-MAC Adaptive Coping factor. Two trends were observed, i.e., an increase in Positive religious coping on the Brief RCOPE and an increase in Fatalism (a subscale of the Mini-MAC).ConclusionSpiritual AIM, a brief chaplain-led intervention, holds potential to address spiritual needs and religious and general coping in patients with serious illnesses.Copyright © 2017 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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