title: Spiritual assessment in intensive and cardiac care nursing.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  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.
  
  
  METHODS
  An overview of spiritual assessment and spiritual assessment tools.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
authors.forename: Fiona
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Timmins
authors.forename: Jacinta
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kelly
mesh_terms: D003422:Critical Care; D006801:Humans; D009730:Nursing Assessment / Q000379:methods*; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D029181:Spirituality