Developing an Implementation Plan

Developing an Implementation Plan: Spiritual Assessment
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Obtaining approval and support
In order for the project to be a success, it is necessary to seek approval before implementation. Seeking approval before spiritual assessment highlights on the impact of the proposed changes to nursing staff and the management. Hence, to make this a success early, there will be early consultations with the nurse staff to ensure that their needs are factored in the implementation plan. At the same time, all the departments will be informed on the implementation plan for the nurses to be well aware of the spiritual assessment. Nursing staff also need to understand the goals of proposed changes. Thus, to improve chances of approval it is important to highlight on how the changes are aligned to nursing professional goals.
In the case of hospital administrators there will be presentation of a detailed plan entailing the project’s intention and including signatures to various operational heads in the hospital. Nurses will then be well informed about the spiritual assessment beforehand to be well prepared for implementation. This will ensure that proposed changes will be implemented properly for the informed nurse. The hospital management typically requires that one shows the overall objectives of the spiritual assessment. Using previous studies to show the relevance of spiritual assessment will highlight on the importance of spirituality in health care, and this can be used to judge the success of the project and improve chances of approval from the management. Essentially, the hospital leadership requires assurance that there are benefits to policy changes or adoption of new assessment tools.Current problem
Even though, meeting the spiritual needs of patients is important, there are nurses who are inadequately prepared or feel uncomfortable to conduct spiritual assessment. There are also patients, who are skeptical on talking about spiritual matters, and when there are no indications about the patient’s spiritual and religious preference it is difficult to integrate spirituality in patient centered care. Any kind of assessment requires collection of data, and to understand personal spiritual beliefs there is a need to ask open-ended questions. Spirituality and religiosity affects the way people view life and the decisions they make, and hence it is important to integrate spiritual care to provide holistic nursing care. Thus, nurses will be required to conduct spiritual assessment compare whether there is improvement in coping the mechanism from utilizing the spirituality.
There is a need for active listening in conducting spiritual assessment, but nurses are increasingly encountering patients from diverse backgrounds more than ever before. Thus, a holistic approach to care should take into account the needs of patients, and nurses should be well informed on how to deal with people from diverse backgrounds. In most cases, nurses are well trained on the emotional, physical, social and psychological aspects of a patient’s culture, but have less knowledge on their spiritual care. The experiences of nurses make it harder to assess a patient’s spiritual care needs, where there are diverse perspectives on the integration of spirituality in health care. Nowadays, health care professionals recognize that in life there is a source of purpose through spirituality, but it is less clear how to approach spiritual needs and values of clients.
Proposed solution
In order to improve spiritual assessment it is important to educate and implement changes to include spiritual assessment for patients. Even though, nurses understand that the spiritual assessment is important, using spiritual assessment tools has not been readily integrated in the hospital. Thus, nurse leaders will be tasked with ensuring that there is a follow up on patient spiritual assessment. This is done to improve the utilization of spiritual assessment tools for all nursing staff who are more likely to understand spiritual care policies if nurse leaders are in the forefront championing for this cause. Nurses are likely to perceive spiritual as the role of faith leaders, but adopting spiritual care policies will enable them to situate that there is implementation of these policies and hence have a positive impact in the hospital.
The job description of nurses imposes no obligation to influence spiritual care, but nurse leaders will address the issue through focusing on the role of holistic care. There are both internal and external factors that influence the decisions of nurse leaders in implementing spiritual assessment in hospital settings. The nurse leaders should hence be well informed before implementation as adoption of policies is harder when there is skepticism. Role conflicts may exist, as nurse leaders may assume that nurses do integrate spiritual care, by the leaders would be uncomfortable to provide spiritual care. Besides educating nurses sensitizing nurse leaders on spiritual care will reduce misunderstandings on role engagement in spiritual care, as nurses typically attend hospital in-services , while nurses leaders may have even less information on spiritual care.
Rationale for selecting proposed solution
Involving nurse leaders in implementing spiritual assessment takes into account the mismatch between nurses’ perceptions and that of leaders. One of the main reasons as to why spiritual assessment is not a top priority in many h...