Spiritual Needs Assessment
William Cline
Grand Canyon University: HLT-310V Spirituality in Health Care
June 30, 2012

Introduction
In this paper the writer presents a spiritual assessment tool developed to obtain a quick guide to help the health care worker understand the patients spiritual and/or religious needs. It is hoped by this writer that the tool will enable the health care worker to treat the patient in a holistic manner. In the following paragraphs the writer outlines the assessment tool and the answers given by a co-worker, which filled out the questionnaire as if they were a patient. This writer then will outline how well, or how poorly, the assessment tool helped guide the treatment of the patient.
A Spiritual Screen, History, or Assessment The first step in doing a spiritual assessment starts by knowing why we need to do one. In a non-formal survey taken by this writer, about ninety percent of this writers co-workers said they did not think most patients wanted spirituality and/or religious issues addressed during their hospitalization. This answer is drastically different than the answers given by patients in many recent studies. An article from the Joint Commission says: in one study, a majority of patients polled indicated that they want their primary care givers to ask whether patients have spiritual or religious beliefs that would influence their medical decisions and/or treatments if they became gravely ill. And in another study it was found that forty percent of patients felt that physicians should discuss pertinent religious issues with their patients. As you can see their seems to be a disconnection between what health care workers think their patients want and what the patients truly desire. This writer believes the way to bring these two groups closer together is through education and training. When