Spirtual or Cultural Assessment Tool

Spirituality/Cultural Assessment : using the links under section 6 (pg 9) of this outline as your guide, develop a spirituality or cultural
assessment tool (you can choose to either focus on spirituality or culture, or you can combine both aspects in the single assessment). The research suggested discusses the important areas for this assessment and you can determine which are most relevant for your local context.
Please evaluate the reliability of the tool you have designed or chosen on the basis of appropriateness to your context, and how easy it is to administer. You are required to provide a rationale for selecting an established tool or for the items you have included in the tool you have designed. You should also test or pilot the tool with different persons before actually using it for the purposes of this paper to make sure it is
giving you the information you want and to see what kinds of issues come up for you and for the respondent.

At the end of the assessment you should get a good idea of the persons’ cultural and/or spiritual orientation to be able to determine what kinds of special considerations need to be made for this person if they are under your care. This assessment tool should take the form of a detailed questionnaire or interview schedule to guide an interview on spiritual and/or cultural orientation (submit the tool used as an appendix to your paper).

You should complete this assessment with three persons: (i) yourself (have someone administer the assessment to you using your tool before administering it to someone, so you can analyse the experience of being assessed and make any necessary changes to the tool; (ii) someone else, who may be known or unknown to you, and (iii) someone who is ill. Please do not use patients without the written consent of employer and the patient.

At the end of each interview you should write a critical reflection on how it went (not a report on what was said) what were some of the strengths and challenges in the assessment, which areas could have been emphasized, what could have been added, and end with what needs to be considered in developing a plan of care for that person if they were a client in your setting. You are not expected to provide a transcript of the interviews or to give full details of respondents’ answers. Also, please avoid making personal comments or stating
your opinion of what the person has shared. Your task is to analyse and assess cultural/spiritual needs specific to healthcare and to suggest a plan of care for your two respondents.

By doing the assessment yourself you will get a chance to test the assessment to see what kind of issues it raises for you, so you understand what someone else may experience. This is an important part of the process so you could make necessary changes before you use it with someone else. Your reflection on your own experience is critical and it is important to be introspective and honest in your recordings.

The conclusion must be robust – summarize your experiences and learning from the entire process of cultural/spiritual assessment, address the importance of such an assessment, provide guidelines to healthcare practitioners in your local context and any other relevant recommendations or insights gained. For this paper it will be acceptable to use first person (I, me).

Vancouver style to be used.