ID #694 The Team Based Spirituality Experience in Multi-Faith Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Care
Alex Lion, Benjamin Snyder, Bruce Pfeffer, Brooke Adams, Whitney Cherry, Anastasia Holman, Mona Raed, Csaba Szilagyi, Shelley Varner PerezAbstract
Following international consensus guidelines for palliative care, teams are tasked to address the spiritual needs of patients during chronic and life-threatening illnesses. There are unique spiritual needs among children and families faced with brain and spine cancers. Personal identity can be challenged when the tumor or treatment affects the ability to obtain scholastic achievements or the ability to perform athletically. In meaning, purpose, and connection to others, quality of life is a central aspect of spirituality.
While palliative care specialists play a major role in addressing the quality of life of patients, the pediatric neuro-oncology team itself plays a role as well. Training curricula have been written to equip oncologists, surgeons, nurses, and other neuro-oncology team members with spiritual care generalist skills. At a large healthcare system, a curriculum entitled “Team Based Spirituality” (TBS) was developed for use among a spiritually diverse patient population.
The TBS curriculum has been piloted in multiple medical specialties. It has demonstrated improvements in ability to provide generalist spiritual care, to identify the spiritual resources of patients, and to collaborate and refer to spiritual care specialists. Due to the variability in size and make-up of these teams, knowledge was gained regarding modifications to provide generalist spiritual care in settings with differing resources. The first pilot of generalist-specialist spiritual care in the system, from which the curriculum emerged, was carried out in pediatric neuro-oncology.
In this presentation, an outline of the Team Based Spirituality curriculum will be shared. Case studies involving multiple spiritual backgrounds will be reviewed. Insights regarding particular roles among members of the team will be outlined. Practical tools will be given to attendees to consider how spiritual care can be integrated into the care of their patients.