Spiritual assessment in intensive and cardiac care nursing.

AIM: The aim of this paper is to explore various approaches to spiritual assessments in contemporary intensive and cardiac care (ICU/CCU) environments.
BACKGROUND: Despite the increasing recognition that spiritual care is essential for quality patient care, an agreed spiritual assessment approach and tool for use in ICU/CCU settings remains elusive.
METHOD: An overview of spiritual assessment and spiritual assessment tools.
CONCLUSION: It is suggested that the staff in ICU/CCU nursing settings choose or develop a formal assessment tool that most closely matches their considered collective definition of spirituality, which has been considered in light of their mission statement and philosophy of care. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Spiritual assessment is essential to formulate a care plan as spiritual care provides a powerful inner resource to critically ill patients in acute clinical environments.