Search Results (11)

Background and Objectives: Spirituality and loneliness are widely recognized as important aspects of holistic healthcare. This observational study was conducted among hospitalized patients with chronic illnesses in a medical ward during three waves of the epidemic in Taiwan, from April 2022 to March 2023, to examine changes in spiritual needs and loneliness. Materials and Methods: These waves were classified as the first wave (outbreak period, April 2022 to July 2022); second wave (mitigation period, August 2022 to November 2022); and third wave (December 2022 to March 2023). The Spiritual Needs Scale and Loneliness Scale were used to assess changes in spiritual needs and loneliness of the enrolled patients across the different waves of the epidemic. Results: We found that the spiritual needs of the enrolled patients were higher during the outbreak period (F = 9.847, p < 0.001) compared to the other periods. In addition, loneliness was higher during the conclusion period (F = 45.764, p < 0.001) compared to the other two periods. Age (r = 0.261, p < 0.001) and the Charlson comorbidity index (r = 0.193, p < 0.01) were significantly positively correlated with spiritual needs. Furthermore, the number of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases (r = −0.392, p < 0.001) was significantly negatively correlated with loneliness. Conclusions: Hospitalized patients with chronic illnesses experienced heightened spiritual needs during the COVID-19 outbreak, while loneliness increased as the epidemic waned. The study’s prospective observational design is a strength, but incorporating additional temporal measures between periods would have enhanced the findings. Full article

Background: Whether hemodialysis patients want caregivers to discuss spirituality is poorly studied, especially in Europe. The goal of this qualitative study was to explore the spirituality and spiritual expectations of hemodialysis patients in a Swiss dialysis center. Methods: Semi-structured, qualitative interviews were performed by an experienced sociologist with dialysis patients in the ambulatory dialysis unit of the University Hospital of Lausanne. The interviews included a set of open questions on the role that spirituality plays in patients’ lives, in coping with their illness and in the recent COVID-19 epidemic. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded and analyzed following the approach of content analysis. Findings: Twenty interviews were performed in 2022. In total, 14/20 patients practiced some form of religion (believers), four were agnostics, and two defined themselves as atheist. The majority (15/20) confirmed that spirituality plays a positive role to preserve hope and to manage the difficulties caused by the disease and its treatment; one out of four wishes to discuss spirituality in the hospital setting. The largest needs are related to social dimensions (isolation, loneliness, need to talk, financial problems). Their level of spirituality has not been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussion: In this pilot study, spirituality in a broad sense was important for the majority of the patients, and a quarter of them would like it to be actively addressed by healthcare professionals. They also ask for more attention to social and socio-economic difficulties. Full article

Healthcare personnel experienced unprecedented stressors and risk factors for burnout, anxiety, and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic. This may have been particularly true for spiritual health clinicians (SHCs), also referred to as healthcare chaplains. We administered a daily pulse survey that allowed SHCs to self-report burnout, depression, and well-being, administered every weekday for the first year of the pandemic. We used a series of linear regression models to evaluate whether burnout, depression, and well-being were associated with local COVID-19 rates in the chaplains’ hospital system (COVID-19 admissions, hospital deaths from COVID-19, and COVID-19 ICU census). We also compared SHC weekly rates with national averages acquired by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) data during the same timeframe. Of the 840 daily entries from 32 SHCs, 90.0% indicated no symptoms of burnout and 97.1% were below the cutoff for depression. There was no statistically significant relationship between any of the COVID-19 predictors and burnout, depression, or well-being. Mean national PHQ-2 scores were consistently higher than our sample’s biweekly means. Understanding why SHCs were largely protected against burnout and depression may help in addressing the epidemic of burnout among healthcare providers and for preparedness for future healthcare crises. Full article

Under the fast development of city economy and environment, building heritage helps to preserve the cultural identity and history of a place and its people, providing a sense of connection to the past. Historic area renovation is a multifaceted endeavor, combining aspects of culture, architecture, economics, and community engagement. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, three new challenges have been faced by historic area regeneration. First, if the renovation has not been implemented yet, how should building attribute types be classified at the very beginning? Second, if the renovation has stopped due to the epidemic, how should the process be restarted and how should accurate suggestions be given based on previous implementation? Third, when the historic area contains a variety of different styles of buildings, how should the stage of conservation renovation be judged and how should overall guidelines on area conservation be given? A dynamic methodological approach based on the management of three-dimensional information has been proposed by our research team to help monitor changes in building attributes during implementation. A case study was analyzed using the proposed model but paying attention to new aspects of model application. By comparing the buildings represented in three historic areas of Taizhou Old City, buildings before renovation often face problems more on a material level. During the process of renovation, it is necessary to pay more attention to the spiritual level of building problems. Renovation guided by a different subject would lead to different problems in the update process. It is also important to categorize guides based on the proportion of different building types and the prominent conflicts in the area. Full article

The COVID-19 epidemic poses a worldwide threat that transcends provincial, philosophical, spiritual, radical, social, and educational borders. By using a connected network, a healthcare system with the Internet of Things (IoT) functionality can effectively monitor COVID-19 cases. IoT helps a COVID-19 patient recognize symptoms and receive better therapy more quickly. A critical component in measuring, evaluating, and diagnosing the risk of infection is artificial intelligence (AI). It can be used to anticipate cases and forecast the alternate incidences number, retrieved instances, and injuries. In the context of COVID-19, IoT technologies are employed in specific patient monitoring and diagnosing processes to reduce COVID-19 exposure to others. This work uses an Indian dataset to create an enhanced convolutional neural network with a gated recurrent unit (CNN-GRU) model for COVID-19 death prediction via IoT. The data were also subjected to data normalization and data imputation. The 4692 cases and eight characteristics in the dataset were utilized in this research. The performance of the CNN-GRU model for COVID-19 death prediction was assessed using five evaluation metrics, including median absolute error (MedAE), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean squared error (RMSE), mean square error (MSE), and coefficient of determination (R²). ANOVA and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used to determine the statistical significance of the presented model. The experimental findings showed that the CNN-GRU model outperformed other models regarding COVID-19 death prediction. Full article

COVID-19 has taught us that whom one surrounds oneself with has a profound influence on one’s well-being. In that light, does whom we worship with matter as well? John Calvin would in fact argue that the people we physically worship with have a great impact on our spiritual life. According to Calvin, if you simply worship with (who he deemed to be) the unrighteous group of people, you will lose your spiritual health or even endanger salvation. This is why he was so insistent on asking the French Protestants to leave France and join him in Geneva. What is striking is that worshipping with the right kind of people does not have that automatic effect. Rather, they have to actively engage in many beneficial activities together, encouraging and empowering one another. This is because, for Calvin, while unrighteousness itself is highly contagious, growing in a nurturing community takes conscious and purposeful effort. In this sense, Calvin explains that idolatry and unrighteousness were a spiritual epidemic that is spread physically, while true piety is acquired through a communal practice of many forms of spiritual exercises. This article will have many important contributions to the field of worship and faith formation. Most notably, while scholars have long been addressing Calvin’s view of active practices during worship which help faith formation, I will show that that is not all there is. Instead, I will demonstrate how even simple physical proximity in worship can have an impact on one’s spiritual growth in Calvin’s thought. Another important contribution of this article would be offering a clearer presentation of Calvin’s sacramental theology of body and soul. Scholars have long been arguing that, for Calvin, the bodily participation in a Roman Catholic mass while believing in (what was for him) the true gospel was a serious sin of idolatry and hypocrisy. My article will further develop this idea by noting that, according to Calvin, not only is it wrong to do one thing with one’s body and another with one’s soul but having one’s body in a negative environment is harmful to one’s soul. If one’s body is surrounded by other people who do not believe in the true gospel, it would have a devastating impact on one’s soul. In other words, for Calvin, the body and soul influence each other in a way that has sacramental and developmental implications. Full article

In response to the rapid spread of the coronavirus epidemic, the state authorities in Poland—as in other countries—decided to introduce various restrictions on rights and freedoms, including the freedom to practise religion. The purpose of this study is to analyse and evaluate the position taken by the ministers of the Catholic Church in Poland and her faithful towards these restrictions during the first wave of the pandemic. An analysis of source material, including documents published by representatives of the Conference of Polish Bishops and diocesan bishops (or curial deputy officials), leads to the conclusion that, in their official messages, the bishops virtually unanimously supported the restrictions imposed by the state, often granting them the sanction of canon law, or introducing even more restrictive solutions in their own dioceses. Moreover, an analysis of the media coverage of the first wave of the pandemic, as well as sociological opinion research focusing on Poland’s Catholic faithful, concludes that both the faithful and ‘rank-and-file’ clergy exhibited a polarised assessment of the stance adopted by the bishops towards the restrictions. However, this analysis allows for the refutation of the claim expressed in the literature, and shared by some of the faithful, about the bishops’ excessive submissiveness to the state authorities. Our research proves that this claim somewhat distorts the reality. Rather, the attitude of the hierarchs of the Church needs to be seen as an expression of their responsibility for the common good. More deserving of criticism, on the other hand, is the excessive focus of the ecclesiastical message of this period on the restrictions on the freedom to practise religion, while the right of the faithful to the spiritual goods of the Church was relegated to the background (Can. 213 CIC-1983). In adopting the research framework developed by Joseph Cardijn (‘see–judge–act’), our analysis concludes with the recommendation that, should a similar crisis arise in the future, the institution of the Church should rather focus its message to the faithful on securing the said right in the context of the state-imposed restrictions, by adopting the attitude typical of that of an addressee of legal norms, in line with the conclusions drawn from its own autonomy and independence as underlying principles of the State-Church relationship in both Church teachings and Polish law. Full article

Recent research has revealed that prostate cancer (PCa) survivors are facing a silent epidemic of mental disorder. These findings are not surprising when the side effects of highly effective current treatment modalities are considered. Here, we assess the association between urinary function and quality of life indicators to mental disorder among survivors of PCa. This is a cross sectional examination of an analytical sample of 362 men with a history of PCa residing in the Maritimes who took a survey assessing social, physical and health-related quality of life indicators between 2017 and 2021. Mental disorder was assessed using Kessler’s Psychological Distress Scale (K-10). Predictor variables included emotional, functional, social/family and spiritual well-being, measured by Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Prostate (FACT-P), and urinary function was measured by International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS). Multivariate logistic regression analysis evaluated the contribution of predictors while controlling for age, income, survivorship time (months) since diagnosis, relationship status and treatment modality. Mental disorder was identified among 15.8% of PCa survivors in this sample. High emotional (aOR = 0.81, 95% CI: 0.69–0.96) and spiritual well-being (aOR = 0.88, 95% CI: 0.81–0.96) were protective factors against mental disorder. Men who screened positive for moderate to severe urinary tract symptoms had three times higher odds (aOR = 3.02, 95% CI: 1.10, 8.32) of screening positive for mental disorder. Men who were on active surveillance or radical prostatectomy with or without added treatment had higher (aOR = 5.87, 95% CI: 1.32–26.13 or aOR = 4.21, 95% CI: 1.07–16.51, respectively) odds of screening positive for mental disorder compared to men who received radiation treatment with or without hormonal therapy for their PCa diagnosis. Unmet emotional and spiritual needs, increased urinary problems and some forms of treatment (e.g., active surveillance or surgery) were associated with mental disorder among PCa survivors. The development of survivorship care programs and support systems that focus on the long-term effects of PCa treatments and the consequences of unmet psychosocial needs of patients during the survivorship journey are critically needed. Full article

Nursing has always been a stressful job affecting the physical and mental health of the nurses, but the new medical context of the COVID-19 pandemic has enhanced this issue. The objective of this paper is to study differences between non-employed and employed nursing students in the medical system of Romania before and during the epidemic using matching methods and a sample of 526 nursing students. Stressors and strategies for coping with stress were also identified during the pandemic. The results indicated that employed students were more vulnerable to stress compared to non-employed ones before and during the pandemic. Females registered significantly higher stress scores compared to males in the period of the epidemic. The analysis of the overall sample suggested that gender and environment were significant stress factors during the pandemic, but living conditions were not relevant. The most effective coping strategies against stress for nurses during the COVID-19 crisis were based on self-control and the spiritual dimension, unlike the previous period when other colleagues’ support helped most nurses to overcome difficult working conditions. The implications of this study might help medical management in ensuring a less stressful environment for nurses during the epidemic. Full article

Reports from Long-term HIV Survivors: Reclaiming Meaning while Confronting Mortality presents research completed by Kyle Desrosiers in conjunction with the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. Applying lifespan theory to spiritual development, it discusses the narratives of four American long-term HIV survivors from Latter-day Saints, Roman Catholic (2), and Conservative Jewish backgrounds. The fifth profile is from a Protestant pastor with an HIV ministry in a rural area. These profiles are five selected from among 10 interviews with HIV-positive people and caregivers across America now archived by the author at Baylor University. Questions directing this research were: how does HIV status affect participants’ relationship to their religious communities, identities, and spiritualties?; what narratives emerge from lifespan perspectives of HIV-positive and queer participants?; and what spiritual practices, mythos, and beliefs evolve/remain as a product of living at the margins of religion and society, alongside coping with a deadly global epidemic? This project reports narratives of change, continuity, and meaning-making to discuss how several gay/queer men from a range of ethnic and faith backgrounds have used spirituality and worldview to navigate life. Full article

The goal of this paper is to analyze how the historical episode of the so-called Plague of Athens between the years 430 and 426 BC seems to have been the first phenomenon classified as an epidemic by Hippocrates, and the historian Thucydides described its cultural, social, political and religious consequences. However, such a crisis generated the need for a new culture, and consequently a new theological mentality, as a cultural driver that made it possible to transform the Asclepiad Sanctuary of Kos into the first hospital in the West to integrate spirituality and science as ways to promote the healing of culture in order to achieve the ideal of health. The adopted method was a semantic analysis of the classic texts that help contextualize the Hippocratic view of the epidemic, spirituality, and health, and how these questions were received by Christianity at the time. The reception of this experience by Christianity, despite suffering some tension, also expands this Greek ideal and constitutes a true heritage of ancient wisdom that can be revisited in the time of the new pandemic, COVID-19. The perspective assumed here is interdisciplinary, putting in dialogue Theology and Health Sciences. Full article