Does Performing a Spiritual Assessment on a Patient Enhance Patient Outcomes: An Integrative Literature Review

Abstract

Background: One aspect that is often overlooked when providing holistic care to patients is spiritual care. Even though a high percentage of people identify as spiritual, there has been limited research conducted to determine its effect on health outcomes.

Purpose: This paper explores through an integrative review the impact of performing a spiritual assessment on patients and if the assessments enhanced patient outcomes.

Methods: The literature review will be guided by a process introduced by Whittemore and Knafl (2005), which includes the following stages: problem identification, literature search, data evaluation, and data analysis. Databases will be searched using keywords spirituality, spiritual assessment, and patient outcome. The Health Belief Model will be used to assess if spiritual beliefs or interventions produce a change in the patient’s health outcome.

Results: After analyzing 13 studies, it was found that majority of the studies that examined the impact of a spiritual assessment or spiritual care were largely associated with chronic conditions such as cancer, depression, or a life-threatening condition. Overall, 10 of studies demonstrated some benefit of patient outcome when spirituality was assessed or spiritual care provided.

Conclusion: These studies presented promising information that spiritual care positively impacts a patient’s overall health outcome if a patient has a chronic condition.However, until further research is conducted there is little empirical evidence for making concrete assertions about the impact of spirituality and overall patient outcome.

Keywords: spirituality, spiritual assessment, patient outcome