Providing spiritual care to patients with cancer

Patients with cancer, oncology nurses, and chaplains agree that nurses should provide spiritual care, but organizational and professional barriers often exist. To overcome these barriers, many nurses need only to complement their professional skill sets of problem solving, critical thinking, caring, and communication with knowledge of some spiritual-care specifics. This article provides basic definitions of religion and spirituality and their relationship as well as suggested religiospiritual assessment strategies, standard spiritual diagnoses, a pragmatic intervention approach, and documentation recommendations.