Spirituality Special Interest Group Responses

1. Spirituality Special Interest Group Responses Dr Melanie Rogers

2. What is the SSIG: • Meet bi-monthly to look at education, research and clinical application of Spirituality • Has run for 15 years • Provided spirituality study days • Spirituality teaching across school for pre and post registration, all disciplines • Has run a post reg module on spirituality in clinical practice • Has run 2 spirituality conferences and 1 research symposium 6 PhD completions

3. Respondents to template: • Nurse Practitioner/Educator • Social Worker • Psychiatrist • Psychotherapist • Nurse Researcher • Practice Educator • Chaplain • Nurse Lecturer

4. Preamble: • Both appropriate Preamble comprehensive, achievable and realistic Well constructed and clear, standards comprehensive but will be difficult to achieve in practice • Achievable and realistic but slightly vague • 2 very impt in helping patients deal with existential issues • Preamble needs editing “competency” and “discussion and agreement” • Spirituality statement doesn’t make sense • Competency statement needs to be in same tense • Very clear • Good but include reference to ontological issues of becoming and being a nurse • 9 standards may be too many

5. Challenges and opportunities • Spirituality often conflated with religion • How to talk about spirituality • Lack of previous reference points re spirituality • Great diversity and awareness needs time • How to inform pre reg educators about the meaning • Not easy to measure competencies • Stablishing therapeutic relationships with patients • How to develop self awareness • Time pressures, technical demands • Fragmented patterns of working • Prejudice and misunderstanding that sp is inappropriate • Confusion re sp and religion • Different ways to integrate into practice • Standards are critical for good practice • Chance to extend self to relate and connect with others • Ontological transformation possible • Developing empathy and emotional resilience to actualise professional accountability • Chance to develop I/Thou relationships (Buber)

6. Resources Needed to achieve competencies • Use of personal experiences • Experiential groups • Guest speakers • Openness and Creativity • Good communicators from faith traditions • Training around standards, how to implement • Link to local, national and international organisations • Link to professional competent in spiritual care • Support for educators for how to assess and what if student doesn’t meet competencies • Mix of academic and experiential teaching • Using service users and patients to speak of their experiences • Reflective practice and self awareness tools • Time and Emphasis on interpersonal aspects of teaching and nursing • Small group work • Mentorship

7. How do you feel competencies will be received • Cynical parts says “oh no” • Pragmatic part says it round up practice and education nicely • We are enabling students to discuss core human issues and big questions • There will be an acknowledgment of potential benefits perhaps with feeling of confidence about listening, being available and fostering caring relationship • May be concern about not being trained. Collaboration vital • Some will struggle with concept but links well to current nursing competencies • Some pockets of initial resistance and scepticism but should be high level of support • May feel challenged due to cultural diversity, clinical priorities and time management. • If presented badly another burden, if well then welcome opportunity to develop neglected person centred care

8. What resources might educators need • Support, encouragement and supervision • Education in an overview of diverse cultural and religious views including life/death issues • Awareness of others roles re spiritual care • Availability of resources to help people respond to spiritual care issues • Guest speakers and practitioners who implement the standards in practice • Train educators • Training on existential therapy, logotherapy, phenomenology and anthropology • Education on spiritually competent practice (Wattis, Curran and Rogers)

9. Final comments • Competencies are very real- they capture the essence of what is needed and could apply to all healthcare situations • I teach social workers and expect these standards to be met by student social workers • I am so pleased to see these standards being introduced