Spiritual care in the intensive care unit: An integrative literature research

Purpose: The aimof this study is to reviewthe literature for threemajor domains in relation to spiritual care in the ICU, namely Quality of Life (QoL), Quality of Care (QoC), and Education (E). Method: An integrative literature research. Results: The 113 selected articles reveal that spirituality is an essential component of QoL and that complementary and effective spiritual care (SC) relieves distress of patients and their relatives. Furthermore, the contribution of SC to quality of care is: 1) diagnosing and addressing spiritual and emotional needs among patients and their relatives; 2) offering spiritual comfort to the patient in distress; 3) increased spiritualwell-being of both patients and their relatives; 4) increased family satisfaction in general and by shared decision-making. Finally, the literature reveals the necessity to improve SC knowledge and skills of ICU healthcare professionals (IC HCPs) through relevant training courses. Conclusion: SC contributes toQoL and QoC. The literature indicates that ICHCPs acknowledge the need to improve their SC knowledge and skills to enhance complementary, effective SC. Further research on SC as an integrated part of daily ICU care is necessary to improve QoL and QoC of patients and their relatives. (c) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).