Table of Contents

Preface / vii

Part I Spirituality and the Nursing Profession / 1

1. Spirituality: Defining the Indefinable and Reviewing Its Place in Nursing / 3
Verna Benner Carson and Ruth Stoll

2. Religion, Spirituality, and Health: Understanding the Mechanisms / 33
Harold G. Koenig

Part II Spirituality, Religion, and Health Care: Examining the Relationships / 63
3. Theism and Health Care / 65
Verna Benner Carson

4. Eastern Pantheism and Health Care / 86
Verna Benner Carson

5. The Legal Issues: Religion versus Health Care / 101
Patricia C. McMullen and Nayna D. C. Philipsen

Part III Application of Theory to Spiritual Needs: What Does Spiritual Care Look Like? / 123

6. Spirituality: Identifying and Meeting Spiritual Needs / 125
Verna Benner Carson

7. The Psychospiritual Lives of Ill or Suffering Children and Adolescents: What We Should Know, What We Should Do / 154
Pat Fosarelli

8. Adult Spirituality for Persons with Chronic Illness / 193
Patricia E. Murphy, George Fitchett, and Andrea L. Canada

9. Spirituality and Elder Care / 236
Thomas E. DeLoughry

10. Spirituality in Death and Bereavement / 279
Miriam Jacik

Part IV The Thread of Spirituality through Community, Ethics Work, and Education / 309

11. Spiritual Care in Communities / 311
Nancy Christine Shoemaker

12. Ethical Decision Making and Spirituality / 330
Gary Batchelor

13. Spirituality within Educational and Work Environments / 372
Elizabeth Arnold

Contributors / 405

Index

About the Author

Verna Benner Carson, PhD, is the president of C&V Senior Care Specialists, Inc, a consulting firm that provides clinical training combined with operational and marketing support for two programs she developed: “Becoming an Alzheimer’s Whisperer” and “Road to Wholeness Behavioral Health.” She is also a clinical nurse specialist in psychiatric mental health nursing, an associate professor at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, where she teaches undergraduates the importance of loving the patients that God puts in our care, and the author of eight other books, including Spiritual Caregiving.

Harold G. Koenig, MD completed his undergraduate education at Stanford University, his medical school training at the University of California at San Francisco, and his geriatric medicine, psychiatry, and biostatistics training at Duke University Medical Center. He is on the faculty at Duke as professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and associate professor of medicine. Dr. Koenig is also director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health at Duke University Medical Center, and is Distinguished Adjunct Professor at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Dr. Koenig has published extensively in the fields of mental health, geriatrics, and religion, with over 350 scientific peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and nearly 40 books in print or in preparation. He has given invited testimony to both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives on the role of religion in public health.