Quality Assurance and Spiritual Care

This article explores empirically the attitudes of spiritual caregivers in health care institutions in the Netherlands towards quality assurance and the goals of their profession. Quality assurance can be located at meso level (the cooperation between care providers) and at micro level (interaction with care consumers). A distinction is made between an immediate goal of the profession (communication on worldviews) and an ultimate goal (contribution to spiritual health). We examined the effects of beliefs about quality assurance on the professional goals, while controlling for relevant population and institutional characteristics. The orientation to the immediate and the ultimate goals of spiritual care is influenced mainly by micro level attitudes. In the future a relation between (orientation to) the meso level and the goals of spiritual care should be established. Keywords: quality assurance, bureaucratisation, professionalisation, self-determination, symmetry, compassion, demand-driven care, worldview communication, spiritual health.