Spiritual Assessment Tools: FICA and HOPE

Spiritual Assessment
Name
Institution
Spiritual Assessment
Nursing care may also involve meeting a patient’s spiritual needs, especially when the patients have no idea about their religious preferences. However, there are simple tools that have been developed to aid in planning and to assess the patient’s spiritual needs. Therefore, the work focuses on the analysis of FICA and HOPE as spiritual tools which are used to assess a patient’s spiritual needs.
Description of the Spiritual Tools
First, FICA stands for faith and belief, importance, community, and address in care. Most patients are depressed, and some even think of committing suicide. However, the tool provides faith to the patient and making them believe that they will recover from the sickness. Further, the patients know their spiritual beliefs and whether they are spiritual as well as the things that they believe give life meaning (Williams et al., 2016).
Additionally, there is a need to consider whether faith or spirituality is important to the patient. Also, there is a need to know how hospitalization affects the beliefs of the patient. Similarly, there is need to know more about how the patient is connected to the community including the whether the community provides support during times of stress and whether there is a leader who assists the patient in their spirituality. Finally, a nurse should know what the patient needs to be done for him or her and the kind of support that the patient feel should be given by healthcare.
Another assessment tool is HOPE which stands for hope, organized religion, personal practices, and effects on the end of life choices and healthcare needs (LaRocca-Pitts, 2015). First, a nurse should know what provides hope to the patient. Also, there is a need to know whether there is an organized religion in the community which the patient believes in and does not want to deviate from its teachings. Moreover, the nurse should ask the patient about his or her spirituality. Finally, the effects of the patient’s spirituality on the end of life choices and healthcare needs should be known by the nurse.
Analysis
FICA guides the nurse by suggesting some questions that can be used to know more about the patient’s personal spiritual beliefs. The questions are open and non-judgmental, which enables them to be applied Christians and adherents of other religions. Further, the questions seem to be sensitive which calls for the observation of the timing of the questions. Therefore, nurses should plan when and how the questions will be asked to obtain accurate information from the patient. Also, most patients do not love sharing such information openly (Williams et al., 2016). Hence, the nurse needs to be empathetic and caring to adequately obtain such information from the patient to plan for their treatment. Therefore, FICA as a spiritua...