Palliative care supports patients who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening or chronic degenerative disease or have suffered a life-threatening injury. Palliative care looks upon a dying person as a whole. Aside from responding to the physical, psychological and social needs, it provides spiritual care for the dying person and their family. Spiritual care is carried out as spiritual accompaniment of both the dying person and their family, regardless of their convictions or faith, through the process of dying and grieving. In order to provide comprehensive care, hospitals form palliative care teams with professionals in different areas of expertise, including hospital chaplain, spiritual companion and, in some countries, a humanist. In the first part of this thesis, the author describes palliative care in general and then discusses its organization in Slovenia. He explains the concept of spirituality and spiritual accompaniment as part of spiritual care. The author finds that, in biomedical literature, secular spirituality is discussed more frequently than religious spirituality, and that authors cannot find common ground in forming a definition of spirituality.
Through Virginia Henderson’s work, the author shows how respectful palliative care requires recognition of all the needs of the dying person and their family. Spiritual needs are among their most important needs. Through Cicely Saunders’ work, the author shows the importance of spiritual pain. If we attend to it, we relieve total pain. The author also describes the distress and the needs of a dying person and their family with emphasis on their spiritual needs. The more importance they place on the fulfillment of their needs, the stronger is their personal experience of well-being when a need is met.
In the final part of the thesis, the author shows ways to fulfill the spiritual needs of the dying and their family. Through spiritual accompaniment, they search for answers to life’s basic questions, questions about God and existential questions. The author describes Catholic spiritual care. What sets it apart from other kinds of spiritual care is the three sacraments which help the Christian grow for eternal life. The dying person reaches their life’s culmination in receiving “food for the journey”, the last holy communion before their death. The author of this thesis shows the great importance of spiritual accompaniment in palliative care for dying people, for this is when spiritual distress is present in both the patient and those close to them. Spiritual care greatly improves the quality of their lives, which is the aim of palliative care as a whole.
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