California Is The First State To Require Spiritual Care In Health Care

This is crucial at a time when the palliative care field is expanding to include not only those facing end-of-life situations but all individuals receiving treatments that relieve difficult symptoms of illnesses that are not easily cured, or for which there is no current cure. In such cases, treatments focus on providing comfort and improving quality of life for the patent and family. This type of palliative care is likely to grow exponentially in the coming decades; the Center to Advance Palliative Care estimates that by 2020 there will be 157 million people living with at least one chronic illness. Support and counseling by spiritual care professionals assist not only people with chronic or fatal conditions, but their family caregivers as well, who often face enormous challenges in caring for loved ones while maintaining their own lives and livelihoods.

A 2014 consensus report by the nationally-acclaimed Institute of Medicine, noted that “ideally, health care should harmonize with social, psychological and spiritual support to achieve the highest possible quality of life for people of all ages with serious illnesses or injuries.” The report also stated that frequent assessment of a patient’s spiritual wellbeing, and attention to a patient’s spiritual and religious needs, should be among the core components of quality end-of-life care across all settings and providers.