Models of spiritual intelligence interventions: A scoping review.

OBJECTIVE: To summarize the effects of spiritual intelligence (SI) training in several contexts and to identify the most consensual patterns in SI intervention design. INTRODUCTION: The "adaptive application" of spirituality in life is called SI, the ability to use spirituality in everyday problem-solving and it is proven to relate to better clinical and spiritual care (SC) competency in healthcare professionals. Interventions aiming to increase SI have been tested in different settings with benefits that can have a significant impact on the way healthcare professionals approach SC. INCLUSION CRITERIA: It included any quantitative studies that used reproducible methodology and reported on the implementation of interventions aiming to increase SI. Text, proceedings, conference or opinion papers, abstracts, reviews, mixed methods and qualitative studies were excluded from this scoping review. METHODS: Scoping review of quantitative studies on "spiritual intelligence" (query term) that include SI intervention programs (inclusion criteria) conducted on PubMed Central, Scopus, Web Of Science and PsycInfo databases, using the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology. Studies published until the 1st january 2022 were included. The studies' selection, extraction and synthesis of data was carried out by two independent reviewers. RESULTS: From the 10 articles/studies included, six were quasi-experimental and three experimental. Most (n=9) were conducted in Iran. The most common target samples of the studies were nurses (4 studies) and students (4 studies). SI training protocols, although based in group sessions, varied in their content between the different studies. SI interventions reported significant increase of SI levels, improvement of communications skills and reduction of anxiety, stress and depression levels. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the consensus among studies regarding the benefits of spiritual intelligence programs, more studies are needed to gauge long-term outcomes. There is also a need to standardize training protocols in spiritual intelligence.

From spiritual intelligence to spiritual care: A transformative approach to holistic practice.

Spiritual care has long been known for being as important as difficult to deliver. Many barriers to spiritual care practice have been reported but are still difficult to overcome. Yet, the answer may not be centred in the patient needs but in the healthcare provider' spiritual self-awareness and self-consciousness. The debate is then opened on what concepts should really be addressed: spiritual care or spiritual intelligence and which should be trained since spiritual intelligence enhancement can bring many other benefits beyond increased quality of care, such as self-growing tools to better cope with the hardiness of the profession. This paper introduces the debate around this issue, and opens the discussion to different perspectives and approaches to a troublesome educational subject.