Provision of Spiritual Support to Patients With Advanced Cancer by Religious Communities and Associations With Medical Care at the End of Life

Abstract

Spiritual care—care that recognizes patient religion and/or spirituality and attends to spiritual needs—has been incorporated into national care quality guidelines, including those of the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care1 and the Joint Commission.2 Data suggest that provision of spiritual care by medical teams to terminally ill patients is associated with better patient quality of life (QoL), greater hospice utilization, and less aggressive medical interventions at the end of life (EoL).3 However, spiritual care from the medical team is infrequent in the setting of advanced illness,4,5 an omission likely due to multiple factors, including practical barriers such as insufficient resources (eg, chaplaincy staff,6 practitioner training, and time7) and concerns regarding offending patients.7