Spiritual Needs Assessment for the Mental Health of Patients

Spiritual Needs Assessment
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Spiritual Needs Assessment
A spiritual needs assessment is an effective means for understanding the role of religion and spirituality in a patient’s daily life and that of the patient’s family. Spiritual assessment is essentially the process through which a healthcare provider identifies the spiritual needs of a patient that pertain to the patient’s mental health care (Dameron, 2005). The outcomes of an exhaustive spiritual needs assessment include finding out the spiritual needs and resources, assessment of the impact of beliefs on health care outcomes and decisions, as well as discovery of obstacles to utilizing resources (Taylor, 2009). Thesis statement: this paper provides an analysis of the results obtained after evaluating the needs of a patient using a spiritual needs assessment tool. The patient practices religion, she has a religious goal, uses prayer in her life, believes in God, and the church has a role in her life.
Figure 1: The Spiritual-Needs Assessment Tool
Figure 1 above shows the spiritual-needs assessment tool that I developed to evaluate the patient’s spiritual needs.
Summary of findings and discoveries made: As a result of this spiritual assessment, I was able to make significant discoveries regarding the individual that I assessed. I learned that the patient practices religion and is actually an Anglican. The patient also believes in God and the spiritual practice that she follows involves chanting and singing for the Lord. This patient also uses prayer in her life although occasionally and regards herself as a religious/spiritual person, though not highly religious/spiritual since she does not attend church each and every Sunday. The patient sees suffering as a punishment from God as a consequence of one’s sins and the role of church in her life is to build her spiritually so that she can know God more and also to help her lead a virtuous life through the teachings she receives in church. Death to this patient basically implies the ending of life here on earth and for one to spend his/her life in either hell or heaven depending on how his/her deeds were while still alive. Her spiritual goal is to become saved by Christ so that even if she died, she would go to heaven. Disease has greatly affected the patient and her family considering that it has really drained them monetarily. However, disease has also brought the patient and her family close emotionally.
Figure 2: Patient’s answers to the questions in the spiritual-needs assessment tool
What went well with the assessment is that the patient was very cooperative throughout the spiritual needs assessment. She answered all the questions in the assessment tool satisfactorily and this was really helpful in determining her spiritual needs. However, what I would do differently in future is that I would include more questions in the spiritual assessment tool that ask about the role played by spirituality or religion in resolving the problems of the patient, as well as the things that the patient believes in that give meaning to his or her life. These would help to meet the spiritual needs of the patient effectively and improve the pati...