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Kokua Mau Monthly Meeting June 2018
June 28, 2018 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm HST
Spiritual Care as a 6th Vital Sign
Kōkua Mau Monthly Meeting with Rev. Caroline Miura, BCC, Kauai Hospice, Spiritual Care Coordinator
Change of venue:
Thurs., June 28, 2018
3pm-5pm
Church of the Crossroads
1212 University Ave
Learning objectives:
- Learn about different definitions of spirituality & current research to better assist in screening & intervening for spiritual distress when appropriate.
- Learn about tools & resources to increase patient/family peace of heart/mind.
We will take a closer look at the Spiritual Assessment & Intervention Model (“Spiritual AIM”) that was developed by Michele Shields and her team (2014). Spiritual AIM defines healthy spirituality as getting a person’s core spiritual needs for meaning and direction, for self-worth and community, and to love and be loved all met. The focus is on relationships and the idea that healing happens in relationship. At the end of life, Spiritual AIM can be utilized by chaplains to provide brief interventions that improve the dying patient’s final days, and, in turn, help the patients’ loved ones in their bereavement.
And we’ll look at these issues in light of the recently passed “Our Care, Our Choice:” law allowing Medical Aid in Dying.
Michael Balboni, in an article in the Journal of Pain & Symptom Management (2018) addressed chaplaincy views on PAD. He concluded: mutual respectful discussion in public discourse needs to be considered, rather than ignoring underlying religious reasons informing end-of-life controversies.
A physician who champions including spiritual care as the 6th vital sign in comprehensive assessments is Christina Puchalski, MD. She says: “Spirituality brings back the sense of a soul of medicine—where compassion becomes the central guiding principle of how healthcare professionals and patients interact and where meaning, healing, and wholeness can be as important as technical cures and fixes.”
Many people believe death is our last, greatest adventure, as Kathleen Dowling Singh says, for “In dying we move from chaos to surrender to eventual transcendence.” Mark Nepo is a cancer survivor who echoes this. In one of his books he recounts, “As cancer boiled me down to what is essential, I began to shine with a rawness of spirit that somehow frightened those who had been close. There was no going back. I had been transformed beyond my will. So I awoke on the other side, closer to the pulse of things.”
We hope you will join us.