The spiritual care intervention "In dialogue with your life story": Results of a longitudinal study on palliative clients' spiritual wellbeing.

Abstract

Background: Spiritual care is important for palliative care, but the evidence base for spiritual care provision is low.

Aim: To investigate the course over time of clients' spiritual wellbeing who participated in the spiritual care intervention "In dialogue with your life story."

Design: The intervention consisted of six individual sessions between client and chaplain of various faiths. A longitudinal study was conducted pre- and post-intervention, and a follow-up approximately 10 weeks after post-intervention. Spiritual wellbeing was measured using the EORTC QLQ-SWB32 and NEIS, and symptoms of anxiety and depression as secondary outcome measure using the HADS. Latent growth modeling was used to investigate changes in outcome measures over time.

Setting/participants: Adult clients receiving home-based, palliative care were eligible to participate in this study.

Results: A total of 75 clients and 33 chaplains participated. On the four EORTC QLQ-SWQ32-subscales, a significant increase was found over time on "relationship with self," "relationship with others," and '"existential wellbeing" (linear trends). "Relationship with someone or something greater" significantly increased over time but decreased 10 weeks post-intervention (quadratic trend). On the two NEIS-subscales, ego-integrity significantly increased over time (linear trend), while despair significantly decreased (quadratic trend). On the two HADS-subscales, symptoms of anxiety significantly decreased over time (linear trend). No significant change was found for depressive symptoms.

Conclusions: We provided first empirical evidence for an increase in clients' spiritual wellbeing after enrollment in the spiritual care intervention "In dialogue with your life story." Future research using control conditions is needed to investigate its causal effect.