Spiritual caregivers in palliative care: integrative review of empirical literature

Spiritual care is essential for the quality of services in palliative care (PC). The purpose of this study was to verify how spiritual care has been carried out in the context of Palliative Care by spiritual caregivers (or chaplains). The applied method was the integrative review, with a survey at CAPES Portal of Periodicals, PsycARTICLES and PubMed. After examining the 643 found publications, 54 studies were selected for analysis, and categorized into four major themes: "identity of spiritual caregivers", "training of spiritual caregivers", "practice of spiritual caregivers" and "practice impacts of spiritual caregivers". The results indicated that spiritual care is crucial for the well-being and end-of- life quality, and transdisciplinary palliative care is fundamental in order to meet spiritual and psychosocial needs, which will be facilitated by the adoption of standardized methods. Training curricula and assessment tools allow a systematic assessment of the impact of education on patient, family and clinical staff. Considering the importance of religiosity in the Brazilian cultural context, it is concluded that the deepening of the spiritual care theme is of great relevance for professionals that work in palliative care. Bioethics and Theology are called upon to contribute with studies in this area so that spiritual care can be effectively integrated into PC teams.