Role-Perceptions of Dutch Spiritual Caregivers in Implementing Multidisciplinary Spiritual Care: A National Survey.

Background: During the course of their disease, patients are, apart from suffering physical discomfort, also confronted with psychological, social, and spiritual challenges. However, healthcare professionals often lack the knowledge and skills to address the spiritual dimension and are in need of support for taking this responsibility. Spiritual caregivers are experts in spiritual care, but their contribution to the integration of this care by other healthcare professionals is largely unknown.

Identifying, exploring and integrating the spiritual dimension in proactive care planning: A mixed methods evaluation of a communication training intervention for multidisciplinary palliative care teams.

Background: Patients receiving palliative care value attention given to their spiritual needs. However, these needs often remain unexplored as healthcare professionals lack the skills to identify and explore them and to integrate this information into care plans.

Aim: To evaluate the effects of an interactive communication training intervention for palliative care teams in order to identify and explore the spiritual dimension and integrate it in patients' care plans.

Oncologist responses to advanced cancer patients' lived illness experiences and effects: an applied conversation analysis study.

Background: An advanced cancer patient's life is often disturbed by fear of cancer recurrence, cancer progress, approaching suffering, and fear of dying. Consequently, the role of the medical oncologist is not only to provide best quality anti-cancer treatment, but also to address the impact of disease and treatment on a patient's life, the lived illness experience. We aimed to gain insights into whether and how medical oncologists working at an outpatient clinic identify and explore lived illness experiences raised by patients with advanced cancer, and how this influences patients' responses.

Toward a socio-spiritual approach? A mixed-methods systematic review on the social and spiritual needs of patients in the palliative phase of their illness.

Background: Patients express a variety of needs, some of which are labeled social and spiritual. Without an in-depth exploration of patients' expressions of these needs, it is difficult to differentiate between them and allocate appropriate healthcare interventions.

Aim: To gain insight into the social and spiritual needs of patients with a life-limiting illness and the distinction between these needs, as found in the research literature.

Improving Spiritual Care in Hospitals in the Netherlands: What Do Health Care Chaplains Involved in an Action-Research Study Report?

Health care chaplains participated in a multicenter trial to explore an implementation strategy for the Dutch multidisciplinary guideline for spiritual care. The intervention was concise spiritual care training for hospital staff of departments where patients in curative and palliative trajectories are treated. Data were collected in semistructured interviews with chaplains who acted as trainers, before and after the intervention.

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

Background: Spiritual care is reported to be important to palliative patients. There is an increasing need for education in spiritual care.

Aim: To measure the effects of a specific spiritual care training on patients' reports of their perceived care and treatment.

Multidisciplinary Training on Spiritual Care for Patients in Palliative Care Trajectories Improves the Attitudes and Competencies of Hospital Medical Staff: Results of a Quasi-Experimental Study.

Objectives: Patients value health-care professionals' attention to their spiritual needs. However, this is undervalued in health-care professionals' education. Additional training is essential for implementation of a national multidisciplinary guideline on spiritual care (SC) in palliative care (PC).