Spiritual Needs Assessment

Spiritual needs assessment

Introduction

A patient diagnosed with cancer goes through drastic changes in life, whether it may be emotional or physical changes. More than physical illness, cancer patients are affected emotionally developing anger, sadness, confusion and the feeling of being helpless. Cancer patients are usually cured when they have the inner will and power to fight it. So at this stage spiritual assessment is needed. Even though the family of the patient is affected by this news but they have to be there, friends, relatives or may be a counselor, since they need to talk out their fears and different emotional imbalances.

Discussion

Brief Summary

Firstly understanding what spiritual assessment is, it is the method used by counselors or doctors to see if there are religious and spiritual beliefs in a patient's life. This helps the caregivers to know how spirituality affects the way patient is responding to the diagnosis of cancer and the decisions taken to cure the disease. Or sometimes it's hard to communicate with the patient about their beliefs, so it's better to wait for the patient to bring the concern by themselves. Or maybe if not talking they can be assessed by giving them a questionnaire or an interview (www.cancer.net, 2012)

Significant Discoveries

As a care giver or a counselor we need to understand that every patient is different and have different capabilities of dealing with pain and reacting to the situation. Not all the patients can be assessed in a same way. It's important to assess them spiritually, which can increase their well being and help them find hopes and purpose of their lives and it could help in decrease depression and anxiety to improve the quality of life. Discovering the points holding them back to improve, showing them the positive aspects of life. Since the emotional stress is more in the cancer patients this needs to be dealt with first and then come the chronic pain and the fear of the treatment and coping with the treatments. If the patient is positively willing to get better and improve then only these treatments are more effective with the help of spiritual assessments working side by side. Not only just the caregivers but also any member of the family, relative or friend who the patient is comfortable with talking needs to be available with the patient so they can talk the problem out, making sure their wellbeing does not get ...