Enriching Spiritual Care in Medical Residents Through Cultural Humility and Courage

While many patients desire spiritual care, it is infrequently provided by physicians. When a model of cultural humility and courage is employed, resident physicians can be introduced to the spiritual care of patients.

We developed this 90-minute, onetime session to speak directly to resident physicians about the relationships between medicine and spirituality and the nature of spiritual care. In the session, we facilitated residents in reflecting on their current posture toward spiritual care while addressing its evidence, obstacles, and timing. We also discussed the need for cultural humility and courage as we followed spiritual care to its root: guiding a person in finding meaning in their current circumstances.

We presented this interactive session to 35 internal medicine residents from all four training years. All residents responded to an embedded pre- and postsurvey question modeled after four attitudes towards spiritual care: rejecting, guarded, pragmatic, and embracing. Out of 22 residents who did not report embracing spiritual care in the presession survey, 10 (45%) reported a more positive attitude toward spiritual care on their postcourse surveys. Twenty-seven residents in attendance (77%) also provided feedback about presentation quality, with a mean rating of 4.7 out of 5 indicating overall satisfaction.

A single well-received session on spiritual care for medical residents models the integration of relevant spiritual care curricula into residency training. The resulting module can be modified for physicians of any specialty or seniority and complemented by other skill-based spiritual care curricula.