Effects of spiritual care training for palliative care professionals

Little is known about the effects of spiritual care training for professionals in palliative medicine. We therefore investigated prospectively the effects of such training over a six-month period. All 63 participants of the three and a half-day training were asked to fill out three questionnaires: before and after the training, as well as six months later. The questionnaires included demographic data, numeric rating scales about general attitudes towards the work in palliative care, the Self-Transcendence Scale (STS), the spiritual subscale of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT-Sp) and the Idler Index of Religiosity (IIR). Forty-eight participants (76%) completed all three questionnaires (91% women, median age 49 years; 51% nurses, 16% hospice volunteers, 14% physicians). Significant and sustained improvements were found in self-perceived compassion for the dying (after the training: P=0.002; 6 months later: P=0.025), compassion for oneself (P <0.001; P =0.013), attitude towards one's family (P =0.001; P =0.031), satisfaction with work (P < 0.001; P = 0.039), reduction in work-related stress (P < 0.001; P = 0.033), and attitude towards colleagues (P = 0.039; P = 0.040), as well as in the FACIT-Sp (P < 0.001; P = 0.040). Our results suggest that the spiritual care training had a positive influence on the spiritual well-being and the attitudes of the participating palliative care professionals which was preserved over a six-month period.