Article of the Month

Impact of Spirituality on Palliative Care Physicians: personally and professionally

Dori Seccareccia and Judith Belle Brown

Journal of Palliative Medicine 2009; 12/9: 805-9

The holistic approach to treating cancer-related suffering takes into consideration physical, emotional, social and spiritual domains.

Whereas many papers have been written on the assessment and management of physical and psychosocial aspects of suffering, only a few have studied the spiritual aspects of suffering. Published data show that patients’ do desire to discuss spirituality with their physicians, and physicians believe spirituality is important to their providing compassionate and holistic care.

Moreover, data in the literature on the relationships between religion, spirituality and health outcomes often show a positive impact on health.

The objective of this study was to explore, by a qualitative method of phenomenology, the perspectives and experiences of palliative care physicians regarding the spiritual domain of care and to identify the role that this domain plays both personally and professionally in providing palliative care to patients.

The study consists of data obtained from 10 palliative care physicians who have one to twenty years of practicing in the Toronto and Southwestern Ontario communities.

The most relevant results are:

1. Spirituality is a multidimensional construct that may involve a search for meaning and purpose and transcendence;
2. Spirituality is different from religion;
3. It highlights the importance of addressing the spiritual domain as part of providing comprehensive palliative care, and
4. A person’s spirituality was observed to foster holistic care by increasing their ability to be available to suffering patients which in turn impacts and enriches thephysician’s spirituality.

Why I choose this article

The results of this study add new data to the scarce literature on the effect of spirituality on palliative care physicians.

I believe this topic is important and should be investigated in other settings such as in oncology, furthermore it should also be expanded to include health providers other than physicians. For example, what impact does the spirituality and religion of oncologists have on the care they provide cancer patients from diagnosis through all phases of the active oncological treatment? What is the impact of spirituality and religion on nurses who are very close to patients at all stages of the disease, and what about its effect on psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers?

In light of these results what kind of training, or periodic intervention, should pastoral caregivers and chaplains provide?

The debate is open and research is paramount in order to be able to answer these important questions.

Carla Ripamonti, MD (Italy)

Dr. Ripamonti is a member of the IAHPC Board of Directors; her bio may be viewed at: http://www.hospicecare.com/Bio/c_ripamonti.htm