A Call to Address Gaps in Spiritual Care Education

Abstract

These scoping reviews challenge the dissonance between policies on the delivery of spiritual care (SC) to clients in institutions and the education required to perform that delivery. The authors discovered a paucity of literature relating to Scotland regarding healthcare support workers’ SC education and little more regarding that for nurses. There were various gaps in the understanding of SC, planning in the curriculum for SC and subsequent learning by students. The conclusion of this article is that as SC is embedded in human rights policy and government health and social care standards, the educational and professional governing bodies should be responsible for ensuring that SC features in all healthcare training, which should include SC assessment in the curriculum as a way of learning and endorsing knowledge. Specialist knowledge should either be available in colleges and universities or brought in to deliver education.