Nederlands-Vlaams Tijdschrift voor Palliatieve Zorg

Samenvatting

Introduction
Attention for the spiritual dimension is one of the focuses of palliative care. However, this dimension appears to be hardly integrated in care provision and is not always recognised by the caregiver. In the Netherlands, caregivers who are involved in care for people in the palliative phase can ask for advisory support from palliative consultation teams (PCT’s). For the moment it is unclear how care for the spiritual dimension of palliative care is warranted within the PCT’s. The question therefore arises how PCT consultation deals with the spiritual needs of the patient.
Method
To obtain insight in the policy of the consultation teams regarding the spiritual dimension, the coordinators of the consultation teams were asked to fill in a decision tree concerning: 1) the mission statement of the consultation teams about spiritual care, 2) the present expertise in this field and 3) plans for the development of this expertise.
Results
Members of PCT’s widely recognise the importance of attention for the spiritual dimension. A majority of the coordinators is of the opinion that their PCT lacks expertise in this field. The expertise that is present is organised in different ways and spiritual questions can end up with different caregivers. The chaplain is most frequently mentioned as the expert in the field of the spiritual dimension. There is a clear want for education in the field of the spiritual dimension and although there are various plans to realise this, many plans are in a premature stadium.
Discussion
On the basis of the results and in connection to the VIKC criteria for quality, four recommendations are formulated to warrant the spiritual dimension within the consultation services: 1) Attention for the spiritual dimension becomes explicitly part of the training ‘consultation competences’ and of the retraining of consultants, 2) The requirements for the quality of the educational content are formulated on the basis of a central directed inventory of visions on good spiritual care, 3) The chaplain has a central role in the development of expertise of consultants with regard to the spiritual dimension, and 4) The intended development of expertise is integrated with and geared to the expertise of the other disciplines within the consultation services.