Disasters create several challenges on the psychological and spiritual wellbeing victims. The challenges have severe effects on communities, individuals, and healthcare providers. Kung, Wang, Liu, Goldmann, and Huang, (2019) demonstrate the levels of mental health challenges on the Asian American affected by 9/11 attacks. Mental challenges occur to individuals or communities in various post traumatic situations. The authors aver that people are further affected by unmet mental healthcare needs after such disasters. Accordingly, such challenges emanate from losses, such as death of longed ones, financial losses, bodily harm, and other severe effects such as organ failures, prolonged illness, and lifestyle adjustments among others. Although disaster cause various effects such as mental, financial loss or health challenges to individuals and communities, healthcare workers such as nurses play, a significant role to manage the detrimental effects through spiritual guidance to patients to support then to develop copping mechanism.
Spirituality enhance healing for patient groups. According to Giske and Cone (2015), spiritual considerations are central in the healing process of patients with various exposures. The authors further demonstrate that spirituality is a part of the holistic care expected of a nurse professional. Nursing care theories are embedded in spiritual support as an integrated approach to comprehensive care. Accordingly, the nursing care ensures human rights, dignity, values and spiritual beliefs of the patients, family or the entire community are met (Giske & Cone, 2015). Baldacchino (2015) avers that when a nurse professional provides spiritual care, patients encounter new equilibrium in faith and conceptualizes themselves as individuals created and loved by God irrespective of their specific illness. Therefore, when nursing care focuses on spiritual guidance, patients become mentally stable, while the healing process is accelerated, leading to enhanced health outcomes.
Extended spiritual care is significant in the nursing practice. According to Baldacchino (2015), when nurses visit patient’s family or an individual with a terminal illness and provide spiritual advice, the patients develop coping mechanism. Spiritual guidance promotes a holistic nursing care. Furthermore, Baldacchino (2015) indicate that the personal spirituality of a healthcare professional is a predictor of the capacity to provide spiritual guidance to patients. Therefore, a professional nurse should possess personal spirituality in order to offer sensitive spirituality to patients for enhanced healthcare needs. When nurses provide spiritual guidance through sharing and other support advices help patients to experience better health outcomes.
Conclusion
Disaster causes various mental, financial,or health challenges to individuals, families, and communities. Healthcare workers such as nurses’ may offer spiritual guidance to patients to support them develop coping mechanism. Spirituality is an important tool in enhancing healthcare for patients. Nurse professionals who provide care to patients in natural disaster situations can initiate the healing process by integrating spirituality into the practice and care. Additionally, professional nurses are expected to have basic spirituality to manage guidance and spiritual support to patients. Furthermore, understanding the faith of individuals, families, and community may enhance the delivery of quality clinical and spiritual care.
References
Baldacchino, D. (2015). Spiritual care education of health care professionals. Religions, 6(2), 594-613. doi:10.3390/rel6020594
Giske, T., & Cone, P. H. (2015). Discerning the healing path–how nurses assist patient spirituality in diverse health care settings. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 24(19-20), 2926-2935.
Kung, W. W., Wang, X., Liu, X., Goldmann, E., & Huang, D. (2019). Unmet mental health care needs among Asian Americans 10–11 years after exposure to the World Trade Center attack. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(7), 1302.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
