ABSTRACT
Spiritual care is assisting an individual with her or his spiritual needs and development. It is bringing an awareness and connectedness with a person’s spirit into one’s life concerns. Who is competent to undertake spiritual care? What skills and aptitudes do capable spiritual care practitioners need? As professional caregivers we have always focused on developing relationship and communication skills to work with peoples’psyches and emotions. Now, we need to tap the spiritual dimension of this process. We have viewed spirituality as the integrative principle of a whole person. Similarly, our task with regard to spiritual care skills is not so much a need to add new techniques of spirituality to our repertoire as to value spirit and integrate spirituality into our present skill level. We do this when we focus on spiritual growth and development as part of normal human growth and development. We care for the whole person, body, mind, and emotions within the context of the spiritual dimension. In essence, our challenge in this chapter is to learn how to integrate spirituality within whole-person care. We are not so much externally applying specific skills to a person but facilitating spiritual growth within him or her.
