Developing a Healing Environment for Broken Souls of Patients With Life-Threatening Illnesses and Their Caregivers

What a privilege it is to be able to touch those sacred spaces in the soul of each person that we encounter everyday. Patients with life-threatening illnesses can struggle with physical, emotional, and existential and spiritual concerns and the suffering of caregivers. A key goal of our supportive and palliative care teams is to alleviate patient and caregiver suffering. When caring for patients with advanced and terminal illness, the spirituality of each member of the palliative care team becomes a single collective spirituality or soul with common goals, values, and belonging, with a main goal of providing the best care for patients and caregivers in the alleviation of suffering. Embracing the spiritual care into our daily practice is a common effort and a service provided by each member of the team. Our role as members of the collective soul is to preserve human dignity and raise up the broken souls of patients living with life-threatening illness by creating healing environments. (C) 2017 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.