[The influence of spirituality at the beginning and at the end of life. Study from the perspective of nursing professionals]. / Repercusión de la espiritualidad en el afrontamiento de la vida y de la muerte. Estudio desde la perspectiva de los profesionales de enfermería.

Spirituality is the human dimension that helps human beings to reflect about their own existence, to try to answer to questions like: what are we living for? This search of meaning is still more pronounced in those who suffer an advanced and incurable disease. This clear need is nevertheless not always acknowledge by the patient, making it difficult to detect and manage it in the daily care by healthcare professionals. In an effort to establish an effective therapeutic relationship, they have to keep in mind also this spiritual dimension, already integrated in the concept of comprehensive care and usually offered to all patients, especially in those who are at the end of life. With this work we have tried, on the one hand, to know the opinion of nurses and TCAE about spirituality through a self-design survey. On the other hand, we wanted to know how this suffering experience may impact on the professionals, as well as if the development of their own spirituality, differently expressed, may have positive effects on the patients. To this end, healthcare professionals have been selected from an oncology unit, those who day by day are facing the impact of suffering and death of their patients.

Repercusión de la espiritualidad en el afrontamiento de la vida y de la muerte. Estudio desde la perspectiva de los profesionales de enfermería / The influence of spirituality at the beginning and at the end of life. Study from the perspective of nursing professiona

La espiritualidad es la dimensión humana que guía al hombre en la reflexión de su propia existencia,para intentar descubrir el por qué y para qué vive. Esta búsqueda de sentido es todavía más frecuente enaquellos que sufren una enfermedad avanzada e incurable. Habitualmente, sin embargo, esta necesidadno es reconocida por el enfermo, lo cual dificulta su detección y manejo en la atención y cuidado diario porparte de los profesionales sanitarios. Éstos, para poder establecer una relación de ayuda efectiva, debencontemplar también esta dimensión espiritual dentro del concepto de atención integral que se ofrece atodos los pacientes, sobre todo a los que se encuentran en una fase avanzada de la enfermedad. Con estetrabajo hemos intentado, por un lado, conocer la opinión de Enfermeras y TCAE sobre la espiritualidad através de una encuesta de diseño propio. Por otro, hemos querido descubrir cuál es la repercusión espiri-tual que esta experiencia de sufrimiento del paciente tiene sobre los profesionales, así como si el cultivode la espiritualidad de estos, expresada de diferente manera, puede tener efectos positivos también enaquellos. Para ello se han seleccionado profesionales sanitarios de una unidad de oncología que viven dia-riamente el impacto del sufrimiento y la muerte de sus pacientes.(AU)

Spirituality is the human dimension that helps human beings to reflect about their own existence, totry to answer to questions like: what are we living for? This search of meaning is still more pronounced inthose who suffer an advanced and incurable disease. This clear need is nevertheless not always acknowl-edge by the patient, making it difficult to detect and manage it in the daily care by healthcare profes-sionals. In an effort to establish an effective therapeutic relationship, they have to keep in mind also thisspiritual dimension, already integrated in the concept of comprehensive care and usually offered to allpatients, especially in those who are at the end of life. With this work we have tried, on the one hand, toknow the opinion of nurses and TCAE about spirituality through a self-design survey. On the other hand,we wanted to know how this suffering experience may impact on the professionals, as well as if the devel-opment of their own spirituality, differently expressed, may have positive effects on the patients. To thisend, healthcare professionals have been selected from an oncology unit, those who day by day are facingthe impact of suffering and death of their patients.(AU)