Spiritual counselling at the end of life (SpECi study)

Spiritual care has become established in the German-speaking world as a term for the shared concern of all healthcare professions for the existential, religious and spiritual resources, needs and problems of sick people and their relatives. Patients and residents often assign the perception and addressing of not only psychosomatic and psychosocial, but also spiritual needs and existential questions to employees in the health care system. In Germany, there is a great need to sensitise health care system employees across all professional groups to these needs of older and dying people and to empower them in spiritual/existential care.

The realisation of the project can have a lasting effect on the entire health care system in various ways: If it can be proven that the training of multipliers in and through spiritual/existential care has a positive effect, this increases the pressure on all those involved to develop further measures to improve spiritual care for older and dying people in health care systems. It would also argue in favour of including this concept in general education and training.