Does the working environment influence health care professionals' values, meaning in life and religiousness? Palliative care units compared with maternity wards.

Context: Increased altruism, self-transcendence, and quests for meaning in life (MiL) have been found in palliative care (PC) patients and their families who experience the finiteness of life. Similar changes were observed in healthy subjects who were experimentally confronted with their mortality.

Objectives: The study investigated how daily experiences of the transitoriness of life influence PC health care professionals' (HCPs) values, MiL, and religiousness.

The Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation (SMiLE): validation of a new instrument for meaning-in-life research.

The Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation (SMiLE) is a respondent-generated instrument for the assessment of individual meaning in life (MiL). In the SMiLE, the respondents list three to seven areas that provide meaning to their lives before rating the current level of importance and satisfaction of each area. Indices of total weighting (IoW; range, 20-100), total satisfaction (IoS; range, 0-100), and total weighted satisfaction (IoWS; range, 0-100) are calculated.