Spirituality and spiritual evaluation, their role in providing spiritual care

Introduction: Spiritual evaluation is the procedure in which health professionals are able to recognize the spiritual needs of the patients with the use of the right "tools". The specific models of spirituality and their correlation to health and sickness are more and more attached and applied to medical-nursing care. This is why spiritual care is recognized by the bibliography as a significant factor which affects the biological and psycho - emotional needs of the people. Aim: This specific review is conducted in order to define the influence of spirituality and spiritual evaluation in providing spiritual care by the healthcare professionals. Material and method: A bibliographic search on the data bases Pubmed using the terms: spirituality, spiritual care, spiritual evaluation, spiritual needs, spiritual pain, teaching on spirituality. Results: The last few years, more and more healing interventions include the patients' thoughts and those of the health care professional in relation to spirituality and spiritual care. The patients desire discussions of spiritual content with the health professionals considering spiritual health as important as physical health. In order to evaluate and diagnose, both doctors and nurses should evaluate whether spirituality is important for a patient and whether the spiritual factors can actually help or prevent healing procedure. Moreover, health professionals who actually recognize their own spiritual needs, formulate the most important healing relationships.Conclusion: The spiritual area of the clinical care is important. The health care professionals have access to emotionally loaded moments of their patients. This is the reason why, any possible tendency for intervention in their patients' belief system needs attention and should be limited. Because awareness of spiritual needs is best achieved through education, should at least be provided in the curriculum of medical and nursing schools in Greece.