Spiritual Considerations Surrounding a Disaster
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course
Instructor’s Name
Date
Spiritual Considerations Surrounding a Disaster
Empathy and compassion are languages understood across different religions, nations and cultures. Providing compassionate and holistic care is the fundamental responsibility of community health nurses during natural or manmade disasters. The two languages cannot be actualized unless the healthcare provider should competence in the delivery of culturally and spiritually relevant care (Jose, 2010). Psychological studies outline that disasters impact people’s physical, spiritual, psychosocial and economic wellbeing while causing traumatic responses, especially in vulnerable populations, including the poor, children and the elderly. Apart from trauma, affected families might also struggle with the loss of homes, community infrastructure and a sense of identity (Falkner, 2018). The everyday struggles will push the victims towards spiritual inclinations to address their feelings of helplessness, uncertainty and loss of personal control. Integrating spirituality in post-disaster recovery can help address these complex set of disaster related complications.
Post-disaster recovery is a difficult undertaking that requires a collective sense of solidarity. Spirituality facilities the shared expression of grief, sadness, compassion and communal commitment to public duty (Lalani et al. 2021). While people anguish together in their loss, they also develop a shared commitment to help one another recover. The outcome is each individual taking part in building community resilience. Nurses facilitate the shared expression of emotions and values to foster the establishment of social cohesion. In turn, cohesion enhances the victims’ to adapt, respond and cope. Community health nurses have the obligation to build the patient’s spiritual resilience during disasters. Spiritual resilience refers to the ability to maintain one’s sense of meaning and purpose via principles, values and beliefs (Lalani et al. 2021). Medical literature identifies a positive relationship between resilience, recovery and spirituality.
References
Falkner, A. (2018). Disaster management. Community & public health: the future of health care. Retrieved June 28, 2022, from https://lc.gcumedia.com/nrs427vn/community-and-public-health-the-future-of-health-care/v1.1/#/chapter/5
Jose, M. M. (2010). Cultural, ethical, and spiritual competencies of health care providers responding to a catastrophic event. Critical Care Nursing Clinics of North America, 22(4), 455–464. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccell.2010.09.001
Lalani, N., Drolet, J. L., McDonald-Harker, C., Brown, M., Brett-MacLean, P., Agyapong, V., Greenshaw, A. J., & Silverstone, P. H. (2021). Nurturing spiritual resilience to promote post-disaster community recovery: The 2016 Alberta wildfire in Canada. Frontiers in Public Health, 9, 682558. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.682558