Questionnaires Measuring Patients' Spiritual Needs: A Narrative Literature Review.

CONTEXT: The objective of the present review was to collect published spiritual needs questionnaires and to present a clear image of the research condition of this domain.

EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: First, an electronic search was conducted with no limits on time span (until June 2015) or language in the following databases: PubMed, Scopus, Ovid, ProQuest and Google Scholar. All derivations of the keywords religion and spiritual alongside need and its synonyms were included in the search. Researches that introduced new tools was then selected and included in the study. Due to the limited quantity of questionnaires in this domain and with no consideration given to the existence or lack of exact standardization information, all of the questionnaires were included in the final report.

RESULTS: Eight questionnaires were found: patients spiritual needs assessment scale (PSNAS), spiritual needs inventory (SNI), spiritual interests related to illness tool (SpIRIT), spiritual needs questionnaire (SpNQ), spiritual needs assessment for patients (SNAP), spiritual needs scale (SNS), spiritual care needs inventory (SCNI), and spiritual needs questionnaire for palliative care.

CONCLUSIONS: These questionnaires have been designed from a limited medical perspective and often involve cultural concepts which complicate their cross-cultural applicability.