Integrating Spiritual Care Teaching Within the Australian Medical Curriculum

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Spiritual Care
• Communication Skills Training

Background:

• Spiritual care is vital for holistic patient care but often omitted from medical curricula.
• Final year medical students reported a lack of spiritual care training in Australian medical schools.
• This study addresses the need to integrate spiritual care education into medical training.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of a three-hour spiritual care workshop.
• To assess the impact of the workshop on final year medical students' ability to take a spiritual history.
• To improve students' confidence and skills in spiritual care assessment.

Main Methods:

• Prospective pilot study design evaluating a half-day workshop.
• Video analysis of objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE) with standardized patients before and after the workshop.
• Pre- and post-workshop self-assessed confidence scales and assessment of learning-facilitating student characteristics.

Main Results:

• Statistically significant increase in students asking spirituality questions (p < 0.001).
• Significant improvements in self-assessed confidence across most domains, especially the spiritual domain.
• High inter-rater reliability in video analysis of spiritual consultations.

Conclusions:

• The spiritual care workshop demonstrated objective and subjective effectiveness in medical students.
• The training is readily translatable to multidisciplinary holistic communication skills training.
• Addressing spiritual care in medical education enhances patient-centered communication.