Spiritual Care in the Intensive Care Unit: Experiences of Dutch Intensive Care Unit Patients and Relatives

Abstract

Background/objective: To gain insight into both patients' and relatives' experiences with spiritual care (SC) in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Methods: Method used was qualitative interviewing. This was a thematic, topic-centered, biographical, and narrative approach, using semistructured interviews with thematic analysis. A purposive sampling method was used to select a sample of ICU patients and ICU patients' relatives. An interview guide facilitated individual, semistructured interviews. The interview data were recorded by means of note-taking and audio-recording. Verbatim transcripts were compiled for analysis and interpretation.

Results: All 12 participants-7 ICU patients and 5 family members of 5 other ICU patients-experienced ICU admission as an existential crisis. Participants would appreciate the signaling of their spiritual needs by ICU health care professionals (HCPs) at an early stage of ICU admission and subsequent SC provision by a spiritual caregiver. They regarded the spiritual caregiver as the preferred professional to address spiritual needs, navigate during their search for meaning and understanding, and provide SC training in signaling spiritual needs to ICU HCPs.

Discussion: Early detection of existential crisis signals with ICU patients and relatives contributes to the mapping of spiritual and religious needs. Spiritual care training of ICU HCPs in signaling spiritual needs by ICU patients and relatives is recommended. Effective SC contributes to creating room for processing emotions, spiritual well-being, and satisfaction with integrated SC as part of daily ICU care.