Assessing the construction of spirituality: conceptualizing spirituality in health care settings

Spirituality has become a popular term in chaplaincy and health care settings, but is defined in such a myriad of ways and in such broad terms that, as a term, it threatens to become unfit for clinical practice. Several prominent conceptualizations of spirituality are analyzed in an attempt to recover the distinctiveness of spirituality. An adequate understanding of spirituality for clinical use should run close to the lived spirituality of persons in their unique individuality, differing contexts and various persuasions. In the second place a distinct discourse on spirituality needs to be sensitive to characteristic experiences of that which is other.