Heart failure patients’ desires for spiritual care, perceived constraints, and unmet spiritual needs: relations with well-being and health-related quality of life

Abstract

Little information is available about HF patients’ desires regarding having their healthcare providers address their spiritual concerns, feeling constrained in doing so, and the extent to which their spiritual needs go unmet. Nearly half of our sample reported high levels of unmet spiritual needs and reported moderately strong desires to have their doctor or other healthcare professional attend to their spiritual needs, and moderately strong feelings of constraint in doing so. Spiritual constraint and unmet spiritual needs were associated with poorer spiritual, psychological and physical well-being, but these effects varied, depending on patients’ desire to discuss spiritual needs. These findings have important implications for clinical management of HF patients.

Keywords:

• Heart failure
• spiritual needs
• constraints
• healthcare communication
• quality of life

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dr. D. P. Suresh, Debbie Bliss, Juliane R. Fenster, and Donald Edmondson, for their assistance with this project.