Spiritual needs of geriatric hospitalized patients and the associations with depressive symptoms and pain intensity: a cross-sectional study in Belgium

ABSTRACT

Geriatric patients are confronted with the context of hospital admission and their process of aging, which might influence their spiritual needs. Earlier studies pointed out that spiritual needs might be related to aspects of patient functioning such as mental health or pain experiences. In this study, we aimed to provide insight into the prevalence of religious, existential, inner peace and giving/generativity needs in a convenience sample of geriatric patients in Flanders, Belgium. We also investigated the group differences in religious and existential needs based on patients’ religious or spiritual background. Furthermore, we aimed to clarify how these needs are related to two indicators of patient functioning, more precisely depressive symptoms and pain intensity. Our results showed that items related to inner peace needs, giving/generativity needs, and religious needs were reported as most prevalent whereas existential needs scored lowest. Religious needs were mostly reported by religious patients, whereas existential needs were reported by patients with various religious or spiritual backgrounds. Regression analysis showed that existential needs were a significant predictor of depressive symptoms and of pain intensity, whereas religious needs did not function as a predictor. Caregivers interested in taking care of the whole person, might profit from the results of this study in order to get more insight into geriatric patients’ spiritual needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Spiritual needs
• geriatric patients
• depressive symptoms
• pain intensity

Acknowledgments

We want to thank the hospitals and geriatric patients for their participation in this research, namely University Hospitals Leuven, General Hospital Sint-Trudo, and General Hospital Sint-Maarten. We want to thank Amy Casteel for her help in writing this article.

Code availability

Access can be obtained via the first author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability material

Access to data can be obtained via the first author.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Ethics Committee Research UZ/KU Leuven and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Verbal informed consent was obtained prior to the interview.

Preregistration of the study

https://osf.io/wdnq6/.

Notes

1. For this study, a preregistration can be found: https://osf.io/wdnq6/.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) grant number [G070919N].