by Nick Jacobs

From an article in USA Today entitled “Health System Struggles with spiritual care,” comes the following quote: “For patients who are dying of cancer, few things are as profound as their relationship with God.” Later in the article there is reference to Tracy Balboni’s study on the spiritual needs of dying patients. “She found that 88% of terminal cancer patients said religion was at least somewhat important to them. And about half had been visited by clergy. Yet Balboni’s research also suggests that hospitals, doctors and even religious communities fail to support the spiritual needs of their cancer patients at the end of life.”

The article went on to say that 70% of the patients’ spiritual needs weren't being met by hospital chaplains or others in the health care system.

As a zealot in total support of palliative care and hospice programs, these numbers were not a shock to me, but were, in fact, a further signal that our current national health care system is NOT meeting the needs of our patients.

Those individuals who felt that their spiritual support was adequate also reported that their quality of life on a fifty point scale was nearly 15 points higher than those without that spiritual care.

Far be it from me to suggest that we force religion on anyone, but, having said that, there is no reason why spiritual support is not more readily available to our patients. There are hundreds of reasons why our peers don't do this; HIPAA, fear of imposing religious beliefs on patients, or just a lack of belief in the entire concept of the contribution that spiritual care brings to a patient’s care, but we here at Windber Medical Center know profoundly what the true contribution can be from spiritual involvement to all of our patients. We typically deal with hundreds of thousands of patients each year, and one of our commitments to them is the availability of clergy, Eucharistic ministers, and spiritual professionals in our facility or available to our patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In God we trust, whomever or whatever you believe that God to be. It is not our intent to confine your beliefs, to restrict your beliefs or to attempt to change your beliefs. It is purely our intent to help to support our patients’ beliefs. Is your facility supporting your patients?