Spirituality, The Health Care Professional, And The Spiritual Care Provider

Course overview

The relationship between healthcare provider and client can provide both with a sense of strength, healing, inner peace, and an interconnectedness that gives meaning to the relationship. This relationship is a deeply spiritual one and results from the sharing of intimate experiences such as birth, death, life-threatening illnesses, emotional chaos, and the issues that arise during healing. By caring, listening, and engendering trust, the healthcare or spiritual care provider and his or her client can form a spiritual relationship that can heal each other. The outcome of this course is for the learner to describe the types of spiritual care provided by generalists and specialists, their diverse roles in providing spiritual care, and the moral and ethical issues to consider when providing this care. The influence of a healthcare provider's spirituality on his or her ability to provide spiritual care, as well as the barriers to providing spiritual care to clients, will also be discussed.