Dynamics of the Nursing Professional's Spirituality and Religiosity to Address Humanized Care in Healthcare Settings: A Systematic Review of Latin American Experiences

Abstract

Today, institutions experience complex healthcare situations that include suffering, pain, and death. This review clarifies the various ways of fostering and motivating spirituality and religiosity to ensure humanized care in the healthcare setting. The objective of this study was to analyze the scientific evidence on the dynamics of spirituality and religiosity to address humanized care in healthcare settings. Documents were collected from the following databases: Scielo and Pubmed databases. The following words were used for the search: "spiritual wellbeing," "spiritual care," and "spirituality" in English, Spanish and Portuguese, selecting only Latin-American experiences. We found 101 scientific articles from 2014 to 2021 through inclusion and exclusion criteria such as those without open access, duplicity, articles in the pre-publication stage, and letters to the editor, and reviews. Finally, 48 were analyzed. The results show that the spiritual and religious dynamic is a hopeful element in the face of the illness and suffering experienced by the person, being necessary for the nurse to include in specialized care. We conclude that is important to include in professional training spiritual care competencies, being the essence of nursing, holistic care. The various research shows that spirituality is transcendent in the person, and it also provides inner strength to deal with pain and therapy. Finally, the nursing professional must work the aspects of spirituality in an empathic way with the patient, respecting his creed, worship, and favoring the integral well-being.

Received: 5 September 2022 / Accepted: 14 January 2023 / Published: 5 March 2023