Potential Uses

Potential uses of the S-PRT in Health Care Delivery & Research

PERSONAL AWARENESS & REFLECTION:  Taking the time to describe one’s emotional experiences is a key component of personal and interpersonal awareness.  The S-PRT will give patients the opportunity to express and reflect on the personal, interpersonal and spiritual meaning of illness-related events.

SUPPORT PERSONALIZED CARE:  Serving as a clinical tool, the S-PRT may provide caregivers with deeper insight into the personal, interpersonal and existential impacts of illness.  Such information may highlight areas of patient concern that could be addressed within the context of care. Since most patients and families express an interest in receiving personalized understanding from their clinicians, the use of this tool may improve patients’ perceptions of the quality of care they receive (Kostreski, 1998).

HEALING DIALOGUE:  A core feature of psychosocial and spiritual aspects of palliative care is the dialogical processes by which individuals deepen and solidify their personal convictions and interpersonal relationships.  This tool has the potential to bring the individual’s experience into healing dialogue and decision-making process, thereby facilitating health outcomes and a sense of personal, interpersonal, and existential well-being.

CLINICAL ASSESSMENT:  There is a clinical need for assessment tools that provide information on patients’ perceptions of illness-related distress.  Since patients who face severe illness are often at their most vulnerable, it is most important that experienced healthcare professionals provide personally relevant guidance, caring, and understanding over the course of such events.  The S-PRT will help professionals to identify and respond to complex cases.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY PATIENT REFERRAL:  When appropriate, S-PRT assessment information could engage the referral process.  Certain patterns of patient response to the S-PRT, in collaboration with patients’ and families’ description of events, could clarify the types of referrals that might be of assistance.

EVALUATION OF CARE:  An instrument that is responsive to the ways patients view important personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal conditions (i.e., emotional perceptions) will allow clinical evaluators to describe subjective changes related to significant life experiences, including medical treatment and clinical/pastoral care.  Moreover, qualitative follow-up with patients who have experienced improved psychosocialspiritual well-being may provide insights into those aspects of clinical, psychosocial, and spiritual care which were most helpful.  In turn, this knowledge could be used to strengthen or direct the types of care provided to persons in need.

RESEARCHING SPIRITUAL BELIEFS & EXPERIENCES:  As a research/evaluation tool, we hope to explore the interaction of more stable existential/spiritual belief systems and changes to illness-related perceptions over time and circumstance.  This understanding may provide new or improved coping and intervention process models for psychosocial/spiritual care of persons and significant others across a diversity of patient populations.