Oxford Textbook of Spirituality in Healthcare

The relationship between spirituality and healthcare is historical, intellectual and practical, and it has now emerged as a significant field in health research, healthcare policy and clinical practice and training. Understanding health and wellbeing requires addressing spiritual and existential issues, and healthcare is therefore challenged to respond to the ways spirituality is experienced and expressed in illness, suffering, healing and loss. If healthcare has compassionateregard for the humanity of those it serves it is faced with questions about how it understands and interprets spiritual.