Healing and the Spiritual Dimension in Hospital Patient Care in Italy

This article is based on a research project carried out in 2019 and 2022 in two hospitals in Turin, Italy (hospitals: Le Molinette and Cottolengo). The project aimed to understand the tools available to caregivers to recognize and address the spiritual needs of patients in the hospital setting. The authors conducted multiple semi-structured interviews and focus groups with nurses working in the two hospitals. It was found that religious and spiritual aspects are mainly considered in the context of certain factual aspects of care (e.g., dietary prescriptions) or in the end-of-life in palliative care. A complicated framework emerges from the interviews, as the spiritual aspects of care are considered by nurses as essential for a good therapeutic relationship, but at the same time are not institutionalized within the nursing profession. The emergence of a need such as spiritual care, further challenged by the pandemic, thus becomes a means of analyzing hospital care as a specific relational sphere, where a neglected aspect is highlighted, namely, the care of the spirituality of the carers, which is constantly solicited. It is through the treatment of this second aspect of the illness that the dimension of giving and counter-giving occurs in the patient–nurse relationship.