Social Workers' Perceived Barriers to and Sources of Support for Integrating Clients' Religion and Spirituality in Practice

Teaching a Canadian Experiential Course in Religion and Spirituality for Undergraduates in Addiction Counseling and Health Sciences: A Social Constructivist Framework

Religion and spirituality (RS) are integral to counseling and health but their incorporation into the curricula of these professions is still lacking. Limited literature is available on how to effectively teach such courses. This article presents a promising experiential, interactive model for an RS course designed for undergraduate students pursuing careers in addictions counseling, therapeutic recreation, and public health. An online course conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic adopted a social constructivist framework that encompassed four key components in its design and delivery: assessing prior knowledge, creating cognitive dissonance, applying new knowledge with feedback, reflecting on learning. Students' feedback in the course indicated their broadened understanding of the plurality of RS orientations and their acquisition of foundational skills with an increased confidence in bringing RS conversations into their practice. This article provides a conceptual and practical framework for educators to develop an RS course for a diverse representation of students and encourages further evaluation of the proposed model to assess its impact on learning outcomes.

Perceived Barriers to Providing Spiritual Care in Palliative Care among Professionals: A Portuguese Cross-Sectional Study

Spiritual care is an important dimension of palliative care (PC) and a facet of holistic care that helps ill people find meaning in their suffering and lives. This study aims to: (a) develop and test the psychometric properties of a new instrument, Perceived Barriers to Spiritual Care (PBSC); (b) explore participants' perceptions of how prevalent those (pre-identified) barriers are; and (c) examine the association of their personal and professional characteristics with those perceptions. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out using a self-reporting online survey. In total, 251 professionals registered with the Portuguese Association of Palliative Care (APCP) completed the study. The majority of respondents were female (83.3%), nurses (45.4%), had more than 11 years of professional experience (66.1%), did not work in PC (61.8%), and had a religious affiliation (81.7%). The psychometric assessment using PBSC provided sound evidence for its validity and reliability. The three most common perceived barriers were late referral for palliative care (78.1%), work overload (75.3%), and uncontrolled physical symptoms (72.5%). The least commonly perceived barriers were different spiritual beliefs among professionals (10.8%), differences between the beliefs of professionals and patients (14.4%), and the shame of approaching spirituality in a professional context (26.7%). The findings show there is some relationship between sex, age, years of professional experience, working in PC, having a religious affiliation, the importance of spiritual/religious beliefs, and responses to the PBSC tool. The results highlight the importance of advanced training in spirituality and intervention strategies. Further research is needed to properly study the impacts of spiritual care and establish outcome assessments that accurately reflect the effects of the various spiritual care activities.

"More Spiritual Health Professionals Provide Different Care": A Qualitative Study in the Field of Mental Health

In recent years, there has been an exponential increase in studies demonstrating the positive effects of the religiosity/spirituality (R/S) approach on patients' physical and mental health. In mental health units, patients want professionals to be sensitive to their spiritual and/or religious needs, which is a fundamental aspect of a holistic approach to patients. Qualitative research with an exploratory and descriptive design with an ethnographic-phenomenological approach through in-depth interviews with sixteen professionals from Spanish mental health units. There is no consensus on the definition of spirituality; however, all of them believe that R/S has a positive influence on the health of patients in coping with illness. They believe that their own R/S may interfere with the professional-patient relationship and their attention to spiritual needs. Few professionals address these needs, citing limitations such as lack of time and lack of specific training in spiritual care. More research is needed on the spiritual care of mental health professionals to define the framework, professional training, and associated challenges in the spiritual care of patients.

Support and Satisfaction: Perspectives of Older Grandparent Caregivers About Faith-Based Communities

Older grandparents raising adolescent grandchildren are a hidden caregiving population. Religion serves as a protective factor for many older adult caregivers. The caregiving and religion literature often excludes exploration of caregivers' satisfaction with social support provided by faith-based communities. Nineteen older grandparents raising adolescent grandchildren participated in in-depth qualitative interviews regarding the lived experiences of their social support and satisfaction woth faith-based communities. Research questions were: (1) describe, if any, what types of support you receive from church or religious groups? and (2) how satisfied are you with the support from church or religious groups? The diverse sample of grandparents were White (n = 10), Black/African American (n = 7), Native American (n = 1), and Filipino (n = 1). Respondents were primarily married (58%), white/nonHispanic (53%), grandmothers (84%), with some college education or college graduate (79%). Older grandparent caregivers identified key people, situational circumstances, and tangible goods that enhanced their wellbeing and posed opportunities for more support. Five themes characterizing social support and satisfaction with older grandparent caregivers' perspectives of their faith-based communities were emotional support, activities and resources, stopped attending church, attended church but did not seek support, and mixed satisfaction with religious support. Implications are presented for social work education and social work practice.

Licensed Master of Social Workers' Engagement in the Process of Evidence-Based Practice: Barriers and Facilitators

Purpose:This article describes the qualitative responses from licensed masters-level social workers (LMSWs) regarding what they perceive as barriers and facilitators to consistently engaging in the process of evidence-based practice (EBP). Method:Two open-ended questions were posed to determine what helps social workers consistently use the EBP process and what inhibits them from regularly applying EBP to guide clinical decision-making. A total of 113 responses were recorded. Content analysis was used to identify emergent themes. Results:Facilitators to the consistent use of EBP included: the belief that EBP improves outcomes, research that was vetted and disseminated by trusted partners such as the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), and ethical mandates. Barriers included: time, lack of applicable research, client-specific factors, and cost. Factors identified as both facilitating and impeding the EBP process were lack of necessary technology, organizational context, provider beliefs, and research knowledge/training. Discussion and Conclusion: Providers identified a number of barriers and facilitators to engaging in the process of evidence-based practice, which guided the extent to which they consistently engaged in the process, and how difficult they perceived itto be.

Current Mental Health Clients’ Attitudes Regarding Religion and Spirituality in Treatment: A National Survey

Over the last several years, there has been a growing interest in clients’ views toward integrating their religion and spirituality (RS) into mental health treatment. However, most of these studies have been limited to small samples and specific populations, regions, and/or clinical issues. This article describes the first national survey of current mental health clients across the US regarding their attitudes towards integrating their RS in treatment using a revised version of the Religious/Spiritually Integrated Practice Assessment Scale-Client Attitudes, version 2 (RSIPAS-CAv2) with a sample of 989 clients. Our findings indicate mental health clients have overwhelmingly positive attitudes regarding integrating their RS into mental health treatment. Additionally, we explored what background characteristics predict clients’ attitudes toward this area of practice and found the top predictor was their intrinsic religiosity, followed by whether they had previously discussed RS with their current provider, age, gender, organized and non-organized religious activities, belief in God/Higher Power, and frequency of seeing their mental health provider. The reliability and validity of the RSIPAS-CAv2 was also explored and this scale is recommended for future use. Implications and recommendations for practice, research, and future training efforts are discussed.

Social Work with Environmental Migrants: Exploring the Scope for Spiritually Sensitive Practice

This article reports a survey of social workers' (N = 1,204) views on the scope for spiritually sensitive practice with environmental migrants. Results indicated some variations in models, assessment methods, techniques, and intervention goals. Social workers from North America and South America, females, Christians, and Hindus working with environmentally forced migrants, and with higher scores on personal spirituality measures, favored the strengths perspective and model of salutogenesis, spiritual life maps, and spiritual competencies open dialogue as assessment methods; meditation and mindfulness as congruous techniques; and intervention goals as comprehensibility-manageability-meaningfulness and positive coping. Social workers from the Asia-Pacific and African regions, males, Muslims, and Buddhists working with environmental emergency and environmentally induced economic migrants, and with lower personal spirituality scores, preferred the biopsychosocial model and transpersonal spectrum models, spiritual genograms and spiritual history assessment; techniques such as guided visualization, journal keeping, physical disciplines, and active imagination; and goals of interventions such as happiness and forgiveness.

A Pilot Study of Peer-to-Peer SBIRT Simulation as a Clinical Telehealth Training Tool During COVID-19

Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT), is an evidence-based approach to screening and early intervention for those at risk of substance use disorders. With the ongoing health concerns related to COVID-19, there is an increased need for social workers who can competently deliver evidence-based interventions, such as SBIRT, via telehealth. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional SBIRT training approaches using face-to-face (FTF) instruction and FTF simulated practice may not be a safe or feasible way to develop students' SBIRT- related skills. This study explores 35 social work graduate students' experiences of learning SBIRT skills in a remote learning format and subsequently delivering a SBIRT intervention to a live "client" via a peer-to-peer simulated telehealth session. Overall, students reported that the shift from FTF to remote learning made learning SBIRT skills difficult, and that providing brief intervention and referral was the most difficult step of the simulated SBIRT telehealth intervention. Qualitative feedback indicates that overall, students found the simulated telehealth sessions a valuable learning experience, but also reported that richer educational experiences would have resulted from additional practice opportunities and real time feedback. Implications for future research, simulation-based education and clinical practice are discussed.

Perceived barriers to providing spiritual care among psychiatric mental health nurses

BACKGROUND

Although nurses typically view spiritual care as important, it is provided infrequently.

OBJECTIVES

This research investigated psychiatric mental health nurses' perceived barriers to providing spiritual care, and how these barriers were associated with frequency of spiritual care and demographic factors.

METHODS

This cross-sectional correlational study of 159 psychiatric mental health nurses used questionnaires to measure frequency of spiritual care and barriers to spiritual care.

RESULTS

The most frequent barriers to providing spiritual care were lack of education and fear of exacerbating psychiatric symptoms. Psychiatric mental health nurses provided spiritual care infrequently.

CONCLUSIONS

Nurses need education about providing spiritual care to those with psychiatric mental health needs.

Client Attitudes toward Integrating Religion and Spirituality in Mental Health Treatment: Scale Development and Client Responses

This article describes the development, validation, and responses to the first administration of the Religious/Spiritually Integrated Practice Assessment Scale-Client Attitudes (RSIPAS-CA). A total of 1,047 U.S. adults responded to an online survey administered by Qualtrics, which included the RSIPAS-CA for secondary analysis. Of those, 245 indicated they were either current or former mental health clients and thus were asked to complete a 10-item instrument assessing clients' attitudes toward integrating religion and spirituality (RS) in mental health treatment. A confirmatory factor analysis showed the current sample's data approached an adequate fit, and the instrument's reliability was considered very good (α = .89). Descriptive analyses indicated that clients have mixed views regarding who should initiate the discussion of RS, but a majority responded favorably toward integrating RS in practice. The article ends with a general comparison between client responses to the current survey and clinical social workers' responses to the practitioners' RSIPAS. It also discusses implications for research based on the scale development and implications for practice and education, based on client preferences.