Spiritual distress through the lens of theism, monism, and humanism
Date
2012-06-21
Authors
Ryan, Maureen P
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Abstract
In modern cancer care, human spiritual suffering often remains unacknowledged. Time,
inadequate knowledge about spirituality and care giver reluctance are contributing factors.
Spiritual distress is not a physician priority and chaplaincy services throughout the provincial
cancer care system have been eliminated. Nurses’ ethic to provide holistic care implies that
nurses may be in a position to assume responsibility, at minimum, for screening for spiritual
distress. To do so, nurses require sensitivity to clues of spiritual distress and have an awareness
of how to address it. This project examines select articles pertaining to spiritual distress
published between 1995 and 2010 using a framework derived from the work of Dr. Barbra Pesut
(2005). Pesut organized literature on spirituality by nine nurse theorists using the philosophic
categories of monism, theism and humanism. This project explores the implications of each
typology for nursing ontology, epistemology, competency, and ethics with regard to spiritual
distress. While an overlap was found for each of the examined categories of publications, the
framework clarifies perspectives toward spirituality as well as implications for nursing practice.
It is hoped that this endeavor will help nurses better understand care of those experiencing
spiritual distress in the context of advanced cancer.
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Keywords
spirituality, distress, humanism