Spiritual wellness refers to a person’s sense of purpose and meaning in life, and their connection to something greater than themselves. Spiritual wellness requires introspection to understand and appreciate our own values and beliefs. By engaging in mindfulness, religion, the practice of gratitude, meditation, and/or other spiritual practices, we can bring both purpose and peace to our lives.
Using a holistic approach to caring for others requires assessment of spiritual wellness and respect for the deeply personal journey of attaining spiritual wellness for each individual. However, health science students and clinicians often avoid spirituality discussions because of the intimate nature of the assessment.
For more information to share with students, feel free to use this slide set: Spiritual Wellness PowerPoint
Students need guidance and support to understand and prioritize spiritual wellness. Instructors can help students build an individualized spiritual wellness plan they can rely on during both character-affirming and character-building times. As nurse educators, we can offer different spirituality approaches by integrating them into our teaching. The strategies listed below can encourage students to work on their spiritual wellness by being PRESENT:
- Promote service learning: Offer students opportunities to help others via service or volunteer work. Help them to experience a sense of purpose and cooperative community spirit.
- Recommend reflection: Empower students to look inward to identify their own values and beliefs. Ask them to reflect upon what spiritual practices they consider important. Utilize group discussions to help students understand that being spiritually self-aware will enable them to deliver compassionate care to others.
- Encourage respite spaces: Create reflection, prayer and meditation areas that are available to all students.
- Select diverse due dates: Be mindful of holiday observances for all religions when planning events and due dates for exams and assignments.
- Enhance syllabi statements: Include syllabi policy statements that provide reasonable accommodations to allow students to observe their religious beliefs and practices, including but not limited to, excused absences for religious holidays and alternative scheduling of events and activities.
- Note resources: Remind students frequently of opportunities and resources available to enhance their spiritual wellness, especially on-campus and online university offerings. Many campuses have interfaith or interreligious organizations that offer on-campus or remote services.
- Teach mindfulness: Create a relaxed and spiritually healthy learning environment within your courses by conducting mindfulness exercises, such as meditation, at the beginning of in-person and online synchronous classes. Provide and encourage use of mindfulness video resources to asynchronous students. Body scanning is another activity that can enhance life balance and wellness. The site Mindfulness Exercises at https://mindfulnessexercises.com/ offers a diverse variety of guided mindfulness scripts and audio recordings.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you really are.” – Carl Jung