Capturing religious identity during hospital admission: a valid practice in our increasingly secular society?

Conclusions This study illustrates that religious identity is important for a majority of Royal Melbourne's culturally diverse inpatients. This data would seem to give the practice of collecting religious identity data on admission new credence, especially as our culturally and linguistically diverse populations increase. In order to understand these nuances and provide appropriate care, skilled spiritual screening and assessment would appear to be not optional, but rather necessary in our increasingly complex healthcare future.What is known about the topic? A search of the literature using related terms (religious, religion, spiritual identity, care) revealed that there is scarce literature on the subject of religious identity and its importance and meaning to patients.What does this paper add? This mixed methods study approaches the issue of the importance of religious identity from the patient perspective via a spiritual screening survey that included a qualitative component, so will begin to bridge a gap in knowledge.What are the implications for practitioners? Improved understanding of the complexity of the spiritual needs of our Victorian multicultural population and commensurate emphasis on the need for individual spiritual screening and assessment. PMID: 27764647 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research