Recent years have seen persistent calls to integrate spirituality within
health care. In North America, there is a broad field of research on the relationships
between health and spirituality. Notably, medical research has
explored how religious or spiritual practices such as praying or meditation
have an impact on mental and physical health outcomes (1). The importance
of taking into account the spiritual beliefs systems of patients in
clinical practice has also been endorsed by emerging “bio-psycho-sociospiritual”
models (2-4).
The growing interest, in the field of health and health care, for “spirituality”
has resulted in numerous definitions of the concept, notably in the nursing
literature (5). According to most of these definitions, the domain of spirituality
includes “meaning” (in a very general sense), and “connectedness” (to
oneself, others and “transcendence”) (6). One commonly used definition is
that of Puchalski (7): “Spirituality is the aspect of humanity that refers to the
way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose and the way they
experience their connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature,
and to the significant or sacred.” In the field of chaplaincy, spirituality tends
to be defined either in relation to religious traditions, or as what happens in
a human encounter, especially “being present” to the suffering of the other
(8).