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Spiritual Assessment Essay

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Spiritual Assessment

NUR 645E
Grand Canyon University
April 3, 2013

Abstract
Evidence has linked a strong relationship between spirituality and medicine. There is a positive correlation between a patient’s spirituality or religious commitment and health outcomes. A spiritual assessment as a part of a health assessment is a practical step to incorporating patient’s spiritual needs into practice. The FICA Tool and HOPE Questions provide serve to assist clinicians in the spiritual assessment process. By examining the research done using these tools, it has been determined that the FICA Tool is easy to use and provides basic data on a patient’s spirituality. The FICA tool is both reliable and valid. The HOPE Questions are …show more content…

When choosing a tool, a clinician should remember that the tool should be patient centered and nonintrusive. The wording and language should be in a style that encourages participation; the language should not alienate or discriminate between religious groups (McSherry & Ross, 2002).
The Faith, Importance and influence, Community, and Address in Care (FICA) Spiritual History Tool provides a way for “the clinician to efficiently integrate open-ended questions into a standard medical history and can be used by any health care professional” (Borneman, Ferrell, & Puchalski, 2010). The FICA tool explores the presence of faith, the importance of spirituality, the influence a person’s spirituality has on their health care decisions, the involvement in a spiritual community, and the interventions to address spiritual needs (Borneman et al., 2010).
The sources of Hope, meaning, comfort, Organized religion, Personal spirituality, and Effects on medical care (HOPE) Questions is another spiritual assessment tool. It was “developed as a teaching tool to help medical students incorporate a spiritual assessment into the medical interview” (Anadarajah & Hight, 2001). The open ended questions allow for a discussion of a patient’s spiritual resources and concerns. The Hope Questions address the basic areas of a formal spiritual assessment. H pertains to patients

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