The Spiritual Supporter Scale as a New Tool for Assessing Spiritual Care Competencies in Professionals: Design, Validation, and Psychometric Evaluation.

This study aimed to design, validate and standardize the Spiritual Supporter (SpSup) Scale, a tool designed to assess competency to provide spiritual care including knowledge, sensitivity to spiritual needs and spiritual support skills. This instrument can be used by all those engaged in or training for caregiving roles. The study was conducted in Poland in the Polish language. The SpSup Scale demonstrates high overall reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.88), a satisfactory diagnostic accuracy (0.79), and a satisfactory discriminatory power of the items. Given the psychometric properties of SpSup Scale demonstrated here, the scale is recommended for the assessment of the competency to provide spiritual care in both clinical and research settings in Poland.

Spirituality in people with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - challenge for more effective interventions, support, and healthcare education: Mini-review.

More recently there has been a growing interest in spirituality in medicine, especially in the field of palliative care, oncology, intensive care, and cardiology. However, according to literature, it seems to be a limited number of researches on how healthcare professionals should provide spiritual care (SC) for people with non-malignant lung diseases and what kind of education for them enables them to do it efficiently. This mini-review aims to provide an overview of current knowledge of an area of spirituality and SC for people with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, including spiritual well-being and religious/spiritual coping, their relations with the quality of life and symptom burden, exercise capacity and daily functioning, mental health, or medication adherence. It also analyses the use of interventions to meet patients' spiritual needs and patients' expectations regarding SC provided by professional careers. Based on the literature authors try to show the fields that should be improved and proposed future research directions.

A training programme for medical students in providing spiritual care to people with advanced diseases and their loved ones: A case study from the Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland.

Purpose: This article presents the first programme on spiritual care particularly for people with advanced life-limiting illness including heart failure, lung disease or cancer for medical students in Poland implemented at the Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. Methods and materials: Several steps were identified for the development of the first programme on spirituality for medical students at the Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz including preliminary work on the content of the programme, agreement on key concepts, terms, and definitions; consultations with teachers and review of the literature. Results: The first Polish spiritual curriculum for medical students was implemented. The spirituality curriculum will potentially contribute to better care for the people with advanced illnesses such as heart failure, chronic lung disease or cancer and improve the quality of relationships between professionals and patients. Conclusion: The article presents the content of the program, the expected learning objectives and ascribed teaching methods, along with the preliminary evaluation made by students.

Validity and reliability of the Polish version of the Self-Compassion Scale and its correlates.

This study adapts the Self-Compassion Scale into Polish and tests the validity, reliability and factor structure of its measures. In the first phase of the research (Study I), 645 respondents were assessed using the NEO-FFI Scale, the Self-Esteem Scale and a back-translated version of the Self-Compassion Scale. The aim of Study I is to analyse the factor structure of the Polish adaptation of the Self-Compassion Scale. The results of analyses using structural equation modelling and exploratory structural equation modelling confirm the six-component structure of the Self-Compassion Scale and the possibility of distinguishing a single primary factor. The results of these analyses indicate that self-compassion is conceptually distinctive from personality traits and self-judgement. In the second phase of the study (Study II), 688 respondents were assessed and the findings show that self-compassion is a predictor of depressive symptoms, trait anxiety, and satisfaction with life, and is also linked to emotional intelligence. In conclusion, the findings of this study show that the Polish version of the Self-Compassion Scale is a reliable and valid measure of self-compassion.

Research Protocol of the Polish Adaptation and Validation of HOPE Scale: Qualitative Measurement of Patients' Spiritual Needs.

Background: The HOPE Scale by Gowri Anandarajah is a qualitative tool for examining and assessing the spiritual needs of sick people, which can be used by health care professionals, but also other personnel whose purpose is to support the patient during illness. Aim: The aim of this study was the cultural adaptation and validation of a qualitative tool for examining the spiritual needs of patients. Methods: A six-step procedure was adopted with the inclusion of four independent forward and two backward translations and cognitive debriefing of the Polish version with experts (n = 11) and chronically ill patients (n = 15). These methods were used to verify a semantic validation and comprehensibility of the HOPE scale according to the standards of cultural measure validation and adaptation. Bioethics Committee approval No KE-0254/222/2020. Results: No major problems were encountered during the process of straightforward and backward translation, and the suggested minor linguistic corrections were made. The HOPE scale was found to be comprehensible and readable by experts and patients, and the instructions were clear and did not pose any difficulties for the respondents. Following the six steps of the validation, the final Polish version of the HOPE scale was obtained, adapted stylistically and culturally to Polish conditions. Conclusions: The Polish version of the HOPE scale is culturally and linguistically adapted and is ready to be used for assessing patients' spiritual needs. The scale can be used both for research and in practice when working with chronically ill people.

Dignity Therapy as an aid to coping for COPD patients at their end-of-life stage.

INTRODUCTION: Observations indicate that struggling with a burden of an incurable disease such as advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may result in the weakening of an individual sense of dignity, and be a source of spiritual suffering. Clinicians providing respiratory care to patients should be open to their spiritual needs, in the belief it may improve coping with the end-of-life COPD. The study aimed to assess overall feasibility and potential benefits of Dignity Therapy (DT) in patients with advanced COPD. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Patients with severe COPD, in whom a DT intervention was implemented according to the protocol established by Chochinov et al. were included into the study. An self-designed questionnaire was applied to assess the patients' satisfaction after intervention. Subsequently, the patients' statements were allocated to specific problem categories, corresponding to the spiritual suffering concerns, as structured by Groves and Klauser. RESULTS: DT was completed in 10 patients, with no unexpected side effects. Satisfaction Questionnaire showed a positive effect of DT on the patient' well-being (3.9 on a 5-point Likert scale). The analyses of the patients' original statements enabled an effective identification of the spiritual suffering and spiritual resources and faced by COPD patients. CONCLUSION: DT is an intervention well received by COPD patients, which may help them in recognising and fulfilling their spiritual needs in the last phase of their life. Information acquired on the patients' resources and spiritual challenges may help clinicians improve their care, especially with regard to supporting their patients at the end-of-life stage.