ABSTRACT
Answering the spiritual as well as religious needs of patients has for years been seen as the province of the hospital chaplain, because spirituality has been regarded as the province of religion. As chaplains in the NHS we hope in this paper to raise awareness of the importance of spiritual care in the health service as a whole. Although there seems to be a large amount of interest in this area there are few tangible means of identifying and assessing spiritual need. Within the limits of this paper we aim to define spiritual care, to outline how we can identify spiritual distress, and suggest ways of evaluating spiritual care. Although we realise the difficulty of the task, we wish to 'Transcend vagueness and come to a more comfortable understanding of spirituality.' (Price et al 1995)
