Spiritual Awareness in Healthcare Professions: Enhancing Humanized and Holistic Care

Dear Colleagues,

Rationale and Scope

In recent years, spiritual awareness has gained increasing recognition as a vital dimension of healthcare, with profound implications for both patient well-being and the emotional resilience of healthcare professionals. Spirituality—conceived not solely in religious terms but as the human search for meaning, connection, and purpose—plays a central role in humanized care and holistic health approaches.

Despite its growing relevance, spirituality remains underrepresented in healthcare education, training, and clinical practice. There is a pressing need to explore how spiritual awareness can be cultivated among healthcare professionals and how it impacts their ability to deliver compassionate, person-centred care.

This Special Issue aims to advance theoretical understanding and empirical knowledge of spiritual awareness in healthcare settings. It seeks to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and contribute to the development of a more compassionate, ethically grounded, and professionally sustainable healthcare system.

Topics of Interest

We invite original research articles, literature reviews, theoretical contributions, and case studies that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• The relationship between healthcare professionals’ spiritual awareness and burnout, empathy, resilience, and job satisfaction.
• Spiritual needs of healthcare professionals and strategies to address them.
• Educational and training models for developing spiritual awareness in healthcare professionals.
• The impact of professionals’ spiritual awareness on the delivery of spiritual care in clinical settings.
• Patients’ spiritual needs and healthcare professionals’ responses.
• Barriers and facilitators to integrating spirituality into healthcare practice.
• Cultural and ethical considerations in spiritual care.

Target Audience

This Special Issue is intended for scholars, educators, clinicians, policymakers, and professionals in the fields of nursing, medicine, psychology, pastoral care, and allied health. It aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice, promoting a healthcare culture that is attentive to the inner lives of both caregivers and patients.

Objectives

To explore the meaning and role of spiritual awareness in healthcare.
To investigate how healthcare professionals perceive and integrate own spirituality in practice.
To identify educational models and training interventions that promote spiritual awareness in health professionals
To evaluate the impact of spiritual care on patient outcomes and healthcare professionals’ well-being.
To promote culturally sensitive and ethically sound approaches to spiritual care.

Dr. Federica Dellafiore
Dr. Giovanna Artioli
Topic Editors