Assessing the Effectiveness of Spiritual Care Interventions Delivered by Nurses in Hospice Settings

Posted: Sep 24, 2011

• Elias Daniels
• Rowan Hunter
• Kayden Pierce

Abstract

The integration of spiritual care within hospice settings represents a critical component of holistic end-of-life care, yet the assessment of spiritual care interventions has remained predominantly qualitative and subjective. Nurses, as frontline providers in hospice care, frequently engage in spiritual support activities, but the effectiveness of these interventions lacks robust, objective evaluation methods. This research addresses this gap by introducing a novel computational framework that applies natural language processing and machine learning techniques to quantitatively assess spiritual care interventions. Traditional approaches to spiritual care evaluation have relied on self-report measures, interviews, and observational checklists, which while valuable, present limitations in scalability, objectivity, and the ability to detect subtle patterns across large datasets. The subjective nature of spiritual experiences and the complexity of spiritual care interactions have historically resisted quantitative analysis. However, recent advances in computational linguistics and sentiment analysis provide unprecedented opportunities to examine these complex human interactions through new methodological lenses. This study represents a paradigm shift in spiritual care research by bridging the qualitative depth of spiritual care with the analytical power of computational methods.