The Search for Spiritual Meaning

A broken leg can be healed and a medical illness can be arrested even if a person is unconscious. This is care of the body. The spirit needs a human relationship. Although definitions of nursing include the spiritual along with the physical, emotional, and social aspects of patient care, it is my experience that in the practice of nursing the spiritual ministrations have consisted primarily of referrals to a chaplain, sending for a dying patient's clergyman, or getting the supplies needed for baptism, extreme unction, or circumcision. I believe that spiritual care must be defined more broadly and focused more