In this study an instrument Spiritual items was
developed, consisting of six core of spiritual items-related n
competencies. These were labelled as: assessment and implementation
of spiritual items professionalization and improving quality
of spiritual items personal support and patient counselling
referral to professionals attitude
towards patient’s spirituality and communication
. These subscales showed a good internal consistency,
sufficient average inter-item correlations and a good test-retest reliability. World Health Organization as active total
care, of which the main interests are control
of pain; other symptoms; and psychological,
social, and spiritual problems. The main purpose
of palliative care is to improve the quality
of life of patients for whom there are
no curative treatment options, and their families.
Therefore, QoL has become an important
outcome measure in palliative care research,
The main objective of this study was to provide
an overview and compare the content of
and domains measured by the existing QoL instruments
that are suitable for use in palliative
care. The second objective was to examine the
domain of spirituality at item level and evaluate
how this is operationalized in the
existing instruments. This information
should facilitate the process of selecting
a instrument for use in palliative care.
In addition, we categorized the spirituality
items included in the instruments into
the aspects of spirituality identified in the first
literature review focusing on the
organized in the framework. Because we
could not categorize two items into any of the aspects
of spirituality, we added one aspect to the
framework to accommodate these two items:
‘‘evaluation of life.’’ The categorization of the
spirituality items was based on consensus that
we achieved by discussion among the authors
and after consultation with several experts.
