Faith and Spirituality
Faith is a strong belief concerning certain religious principles owing to a spiritual conviction and not necessarily based on any proof. Having faith ensures that an individual confides with the teachings and principles of a given religion to enhance spiritual growth. In spirituality, an individual gets concerned in aspects that involve the human spirit and the soul and not necessarily on the material things. Spirituality is based on spiritual beliefs, which are aspects that concern individual practices that help towards creating a sense of peace and peace in the spiritual realm. The elements of faith and spirituality focus on aspects that concern beliefs of religious principles to help in creating a connection with the spiritual world.
The main difference between faith and spirituality is the fact that faith focuses on the adherence of certain beliefs and religious doctrines while spirituality focuses on creating purpose and meaning to life. According to Timmins & Caldeira (2017), faith is the dependence of a superhuman being and having an assurance of protection and hope. Spirituality focuses on matters of the soul, which involves factors that are defined within the religious doctrines. In that case, spirituality relates with faith considering that for an individual to be spiritual, they must be having faith that makes them to adhere to religious doctrines. An example of faith is believing in God and his doctrines concerning life, while an example of spirituality concerns creating a connection with God through prayers in order to understand the concept of spirituality. During the provision of care to the patients, is important to focus on the spirituality and faith of an individual in order to have a better understanding on how to deal with them. Faith acts as a guide to provide care to patients basing on crucial elements concerning faith such as the principle and doctrines that are defined within a given faith.
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Spiritual Diagnosis
Spiritual diagnosis is a crucial factor in the nursing profession, as it helps nurses to provide care to the patients. The spirituality of both the patient and the nurse plays an important role during the process of providing care to the patient. When focusing on spiritual diagnosis, it is necessary to focus on spiritual distress, which concerns the disturbance and the spiritual interruption of the belief system of an individual. The disturbance of the belief system may be attributed to a number of factors affecting an individual. The main factor associated with the spiritual distress entails bodily illness, which results in a situation where an individual lose faith and become weak in the spirituality (O'brien, 2017). In that case, it is important for the nurses to focus on spiritual assessment in their plan of care in order to create an environment that allows interactions with the patients with the aim of identifying their spiritual needs in relation to their medical needs. The implementation of spiritual assessment allows a nurse engaging in the provision of care to identify the spiritual beliefs and practices of the patients in a bid to impact on their recovery process . In a successful spiritual diagnosis, patients tend to receive healing and obtain spiritual nourishment considering that their spiritual needs are addressed.
Engage Faith as a Nurse Leader
The role of a nurse leader entails focusing on creating an inspiration within the workplace, with the aim of obtaining a common goal concerning the provision of quality care to the patients. Nurse leaders tend to have leadership qualities that enhance their ability to interact with the junior nurses in the workplace. The leadership qualities perceived by the nurse leaders helps to promote teamwork within the workplaces and ensures that the junior nurses are in a position of improving care to the patients. For a nurse leader, it is important to engage faith when engaging in the provision of care to the patients and when interacting with other nurses. Firstly, faith helps in the establishment of a good character and attitudes towards other people in the society considering that faith is governed by religious principles and doctrines. The religious doctrines help to ensure that an individual has the ability to show mercy to people suffering, which is a significant aspect when dealing with the suffering patients. Secondly, engaging faith helps to ensure that a nurse leader has confidence based on the religious doctrines that provide courage and leadership skills.
Cultural Diversity and Nursing
The nursing profession faces issues relating to diversities such as religious and cultural diversities among the patients and other nurses within the workplace. The diversities influence the provision of healthcare services to the patients. According to Gibson & Swinton (2017), diversity in the nursing is significant as it helps in ensuring that the nurses have the ability to deal with a wide range of patients with different cultural backgrounds. Based on the analysis of the issue that concerns diversity in nursing, I have learned that diversity among the nurses helps in enhancing the quality of care provided to the patient considering that the nurses tend to obtain knowledge concerning various aspects of culture such as food, customs, and religious views. Additionally, I have learned that diversity helps in creating a situation where patients tend to be more comfortable when dealing with nurses that understand their cultural beliefs unlike in situations when they deal with nurses from different cultural backgrounds with little knowledge on how to deal with diversities among the patients.
Limitation and Strength in Providing Faith-Based Care
The development of faith-based care is attributed to the rising costs of healthcare services thereby reducing accessibility to quality care. The first major strength associated with faith-based care involves improving the accessibility of healthcare services to uninsured adults that would otherwise have no access to quality care (DeHaven, Hunter, Wilder, Walton, & Berry, 2004). Secondly, faith-based care focuses on hosting health promotion programs focusing on factors such as health education and create awareness on chronic illnesses such as cancer, and diabetes. Lastly, faith-based care has engaged successful collaboration with churches thus contributing to improvements in the community health considering that majority of the people obtain access to quality care plans that suit their healthcare needs (DeHaven, Hunter, Wilder, Walton, & Berry, 2004). However, faith-based care faces a major limitation that concerns discrimination among members of different faith and religious backgrounds. The faith-based care organization tend to focus on members of a given faith thereby discriminating people with different faith considering the partnerships with churches.
Integration of Current Beliefs and Faith as A Nurse
As a nurse, it is important to capitalize on integrating personal beliefs and faith values in a bid to provide quality care to the patients. Firstly, it is necessary to ensure that the beliefs are in line with the code of conduct in the nursing profession in order to capitalize on the ability to care for the patients despite difference in culture and religion. Secondly, it is important to focus on understanding the values in my faith to create a strong foundation relating to the aspect of dealing with patients that require quality acre. the principles and doctrines defined within a given faith helps in ensuring that an individual live accordingly and maintains positive value when interacting with other members of the society .
References
DeHaven, M. J., Hunter, I. B., Wilder, L., Walton, J. W., & Berry, J. (2004). Health programs in faith-based organizations: are they effective?. American Journal of Public Health , 94 (6), 1030-1036.
Gibson, S., & Swinton, J. (2017). Spirituality, nursing and mental health. In Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing (pp. 113-122). Routledge.
O'brien, M. E. (2017). Spirituality in nursing . Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Timmins, F., & Caldeira, S. (2017). Understanding spirituality and spiritual care in nursing. Nursing Standard , 31 (22).
