Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield, UK.
J Pain Symptom Manage. 2012 Jun;43(6):1105-19. doi: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2011.06.017. Epub 2012 May 9.
Spirituality is a distinctive subject within palliative care practice and literature, but research to date is relatively undeveloped in this field and studies often throw more light on conceptual and methodological issues than producing reliable data for clinical practice.
To determine what is known about the spiritual needs of palliative care patients from the evidence presented in published research.
Specialist online databases were interrogated for primary empirical studies of patients with a chronic disease unresponsive to curative treatment. Studies that only used a proxy for the patient or reported expert opinion were excluded. Each study was critically appraised for quality and the strength of its evidence to determine if any data could be pooled.
Thirty-five studies were identified, equating to a total of 1374 patients. Study populations were typically people with advanced-stage cancer, older than 60 years, who were English speaking, and with a Christian or Jewish religious affiliation, reflecting the predominance of Anglo-American studies. Studies fell into two groups: those that investigated the nature of spiritual experience and those that examined the relationship of spirituality with other phenomena. The evidence was insufficiently homogeneous to pool.
Relevant accounts of what spirituality means for palliative care patients and evidence of how it operates in the lives of people with life-limiting disease can be derived from research. Studies to date are limited by reductive representations of spirituality and the conduct of research by health professionals within health care communities demarcated from disciplines and interpretive traditions of spirituality.
灵性是姑息治疗实践和文献中的一个独特主题，但迄今为止，该领域的研究相对较少，而且研究往往更多地揭示了概念和方法问题，而不是为临床实践提供可靠的数据。
从已发表的研究证据中确定姑息治疗患者的精神需求。
专门的在线数据库被查询，以获取对无法治愈的慢性病患者的原始实证研究。仅使用患者代理或报告专家意见的研究被排除在外。对每项研究进行批判性评估，以确定其质量和证据强度，以确定是否可以汇总任何数据。
确定了 35 项研究，共计 1374 名患者。研究人群通常是年龄在 60 岁以上、患有晚期癌症、讲英语且具有基督教或犹太教信仰的人，反映了英美研究的主导地位。研究分为两组：一组调查精神体验的本质，另一组则研究精神与其他现象的关系。证据不够一致，无法进行汇总。
可以从研究中得出姑息治疗患者的精神意义的相关说明，以及精神在绝症患者生活中的运作方式的证据。迄今为止的研究受到对精神的简化表示以及卫生专业人员在与精神学科和解释传统相区别的卫生保健社区中进行研究的限制。
