Spiritual Care in Nursing: Christianity and Buddhism
This paper examines the role of spiritual care in nursing practice, focusing on how healthcare providers can meet the religious and spiritual needs of patients from different faith backgrounds. It compares Christian and Buddhist beliefs across seven foundational worldview questions — including the nature of reality, human identity, death, knowledge, and ethics — drawn from Shelly and Miller's framework. The paper argues that nurses must develop cross-cultural religious competence in order to respect and support patients' faith traditions without imposing their own beliefs, ultimately improving patient outcomes and the quality of holistic care.
- Introduction: Spirituality and the Nurse's Role: Why spiritual care matters in nursing practice
- Christianity and Buddhism: Common Components to Healing: Key beliefs and healing concepts in both religions
- Spiritual Care When Provider and Patient Beliefs Differ: Patient expectations when nurse and patient differ religiously
- Worldview Questions: A Comparative Analysis: Seven worldview questions compared across both faiths
- Conclusion: Importance of spiritual competence in healthcare settings
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What makes this paper effective
- Uses a structured comparative framework — Shelly and Miller's seven worldview questions — to systematically contrast Christian and Buddhist beliefs side by side, giving the analysis scholarly coherence.
- Grounds the discussion in practical nursing implications throughout, connecting abstract theological differences to concrete clinical responsibilities such as patient rituals, prayer requests, and end-of-life care.
- Maintains a respectful, neutral tone when discussing both faith traditions, modeling the very sensitivity it advocates for healthcare providers.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of a comparative analytical framework applied to interdisciplinary content. By organizing the comparison around the same seven worldview questions for both religions, the author ensures a parallel structure that makes differences and similarities immediately legible. This technique is especially useful in health humanities papers where multiple perspectives must be weighed without privileging one over another.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an introduction establishing the relevance of spiritual care in nursing. It then introduces Christianity and Buddhism individually before addressing the shared concern of cross-belief caregiving. The longest and most detailed section applies Shelly and Miller's seven worldview questions to both religions in turn. A brief conclusion returns to the practical nursing context and offers a personal reflection on the importance of spiritual competence in healthcare.
Introduction: Spirituality and the Nurse's Role
Spiritual care was not historically considered a part of medicine. However, over time both holistic nursing and the broader health movement have become increasingly involved in assessing patients' religious needs and providing appropriate care. In everyday life, many patients who enter the hospital hold strong spiritual beliefs and expect those beliefs to be respected in the course of their treatment. There are also cases where a doctor does not share the same religious background as the patient, making it more difficult to fulfill that patient's spiritual needs. Questions arise regarding the role of nurses in these situations and whether they can adequately fulfill those needs (Spiritual Care: The Nurse's Role, n.d.).
Identifying this role for nurses does not mean that the hospital is devaluing the pastor's or minister's role in the community. It simply means that both the pastor and the nurse can work together to heal the patient in their own complementary ways. A nurse might not always feel comfortable fulfilling spiritual roles for the patient, but it is their duty to remain sensitive to every patient's faith. With the role of spirituality in healthcare growing, the nursing profession is required to increase its competence and awareness regarding patients' faith and religion (Nelson, 1984, p. 26).
Christianity and Buddhism: Common Components to Healing
Christianity is one of the world's largest religions and is divided into three broad divisions: Protestant faiths, Eastern Orthodox religions, and Roman Catholicism. It is based on the worship of one God and on promoting His kingdom by fulfilling the messages of Jesus as conveyed in the Gospel. Nurses caring for Christian patients must be attentive to the different religious rituals and beliefs connected to health-related events such as childbearing, birth, death, and organ donation. Research indicates that spiritual care helped Christian patients become more aware of transcendence, higher purpose, and meaning (Conco, 1995). Nurses should also be familiar with various Western churches, including the Unitarian Universalist Association of Churches, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Christian Science (Spiritual Care: The Nurse's Role, n.d.).
The practices and beliefs of Buddhism are derived from the teachings and life of the Buddha, who lived approximately 2,500 years ago in India. The traditions of the many Buddhist communities are closely linked to the cultures of different geographical regions, such as Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhists are often found in monasteries of nuns and monks who preserve the liturgies and teachings of the faith. According to Buddhism, the suffering of a person can end by following the Eightfold Path: right mindfulness, right contemplation, right effort, right livelihood, right action, right speech, right intention, and right understanding (Spiritual Care: The Nurse's Role, n.d.).
Spiritual Care When Provider and Patient Beliefs Differ
A hospitalized patient has the right to receive treatment that is consistent with his or her spiritual faith. From the patient's perspective, it is important that the rituals of their faith be understood and respected by their healthcare providers. To accomplish this, nurses need adequate training so that they can recognize and respond to patients' spiritual needs. Not every patient who enters the hospital shares the same faith. When a patient holds strong religious beliefs, they expect nurses and other healthcare providers to treat them in a manner consistent with those beliefs and rituals.
Healthcare providers should therefore have a basic knowledge of different religions so that they can more effectively care for diverse patients. It is not necessarily required that a nurse perform specific religious rituals in full, but they must have a working understanding of different faiths in order to provide appropriate assistance and sensitive medical care (Spiritual Care: The Nurse's Role, n.d.).
Conclusion
When an ill person comes to a healthcare provider, they want their needs and spiritual requirements to be recognized and respected. They expect nurses and health providers to understand and honor their faith, and, when necessary, to go further — leading a prayer, for example, or facilitating access to spiritual counseling. Nurses must therefore be well trained in order to meet those expectations. If nurses are biased or poorly prepared, a patient may become fearful and reluctant to seek or continue medical attention. It is therefore essential that physicians and nurses understand and support patients' beliefs throughout the process of providing medical care (Puchalski, 2001).
Spiritual aspects of healing deserve serious consideration in the full scope of healthcare practice. All healthcare providers must cultivate patience and openness toward the diverse views of their patients, ensuring that their own personal biases do not interfere with the healing process.
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