Spiritual Care in the NICU from the Parents’ Perspective: A Mixed Methods Study

Le résumé fourni par la source

Objective: The importance of whole person care interventions is increasingly appreciated in the literature. Spiritual care is one of these dimensions and has been desired by a large percentage of clinical populations in critical care situations. A typical assumption is that spiritual care would be provided by chaplains. There is limited research exploring parents’ perspectives on spiritual care from the medical team in general and from physicians particularly. The objective of this study was to further elucidate the parent experience on receiving spiritual care from varied members of the medical team. Methods: An anonymous survey was distributed to parents and caregivers at a single institution. A smaller subset of parents were further interviewed in order to obtain qualitative data which was analyzed using a general inductive approach. Results: Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from the caregivers and legal guardians of NICU patients in the form of 108 quantitative surveys and 16 qualitative interviews. Parents indicated openness to receiving spiritual care from various members of the medical team and did not have strong barriers to receiving various types of spiritual care, nor significant barriers to receiving spiritual care from those of differing faiths or spiritual beliefs. Conclusion: Guardians typically expect spiritual care from chaplains, however this study demonstrates caregivers also appreciate spiritual care from other members of the healthcare team including their physician. This validates the importance of educating physicians in how to provide spiritual care for families in critical care settings.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.