Introduction

In 2015 the then head of the spiritual care team in Lothian Health Board, Scotland, became concerned that the gradual reduction in hours allotted to the team was having an adverse effect on the spiritual care in the nine hospital based complex clinical care (HBCCC) units in the area. He brought together a working group to develop a rationale for increasing the team’s resources, by studying the effects that the lack of spiritual care knowledge and education had on both staff and patients. He postulated that the staff on those units needed education to enable them to deliver elements of spiritual care confidently. The subsequent research can be found in Aird and O’Neill’s paper (2017) which concluded that education of all staff was key to the delivery of spiritual care to patients on these units. See link below for full report.