Abstract
Authors: Verna B. Carson, PhD and Harold C. Koenig, MD, MHSc,
West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008, 422 pages, ISBN: 978-1-59947-145-7, $34.95.
Koenig provides an important and extensive summary of medical research that links patients' spirituality to health care outcomes. Examples include the role of religious beliefs as coping mechanisms for illness, and how spiritual and religious beliefs may guide patients' medical decision making. He reviews a variety of studies that have found a relationship between religious involvement and positive health outcomes, such as improved blood pressure and lower incidence of strokes. This chapter powerfully demonstrates that spiritual issues directly impact health, and that patients benefit when nurses and other providers acknowledge this and incorporate spiritual care into their practice.
One way of assisting practitioners to analyze spiritual well-being and coping is to understand the role that a patient's religious background may play in health. Discussions are provided about the impact a wide range of religious views may have on health-related issues such as death and dying, and controversial subjects such as reproductive rights. These reviews include easy-to-read descriptions of primary tenets of various religions and how these may affect patients' decisions about their care. Legal issues, such as the requirement to perform a spiritual assessment as part of an intake procedure in hospitals, are described. Concepts are then applied to specific populations, such as children and elderly patients, which provide resources for thinking about developmental stages in relation to health, illness, and spirituality. A lengthy chapter on spiritual care in communities documents the impact of people caring for each other, both formally, such as parish nursing, and informally.
Spiritual care around the time of death is an important subject, as it is often a time of high emotion for many patients and families. Appropriate emphasis is placed on the need for the caregiver to understand his or her own attitudes toward death and dying, and how these may affect the care they give. Assessment at the time of death includes physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs, a helpful reminder to nurses who may be dealing with their own emotions. Later chapters lay the groundwork to help nurses understand the definitions of spiritual well-being, spiritual needs, spiritual distress, and how these now formalized terms can be used to guide nursing care.
Most people reading this book would find that the authors have worked hard to present information that makes the task of providing spiritual care more doable. Their personal beliefs are included at times, which may be hard to avoid given the nature of the subject. There still remains much work to be done about helping health care professionals discern the words and actions to use in situations requiring spiritual care. However, Carson and Koenig have compiled a book that provides readers with effective summaries of current knowledge and understanding about the link between spirituality and health. The positive health care findings related to spirituality alone make it important for health care providers to learn more about this relationship and its impact on health, regardless of the provider's personal view of the subject.