Where does spirituality collide?

The experience, in an organization, of doing work that has meaning, of belonging to a community of colleagues, and of being able to express one's inner life on the job. Ashmos and Duchon's 2000 Spirituality at Work defined the idea along these three components and built a survey to measure them at the individual, work-unit, and organizational levels. Here the referent is a feature of employees' experience inside a firm, studied to predict engagement and performance, and it deliberately sets aside any religious content, unlike the meaning used in the study of religion, the psychology of the person, or bedside nursing.[1]

Unit

One employee's rating of meaning, community, and inner life at work

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed with self-report survey scales for meaningful work, belonging to a community, and alignment with organizational values

A person's individual search for connection with the sacred or transcendent, often contrasted with religiosity, which names commitment to the organized doctrines and institutions of a faith. Zinnbauer and colleagues' 1997 study Religion and Spirituality: Unfuzzying the Fuzzy showed that many people describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, and mapped how the two words have drifted apart in ordinary use. In this field the referent is the content of a person's relationship to the transcendent and how it differs from institutional religion, a question about belief and the sacred rather than about a workplace, a psychological score, or a patient's care.[2]

Unit

One person's self-identification and relationship to the sacred

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Studied by self-labeling, interviews, and questionnaires that separate personal spirituality from institutional religiousness

A measurable aspect of a person's well-being, made up of a religious component, meaning one's felt relationship with God, and an existential component, meaning one's felt life purpose and satisfaction. Ellison's 1983 paper Spiritual Well-Being: Conceptualization and Measurement set out this two-part model and introduced a self-report scale to score it. Here the referent is a psychological quantity carried by an individual and correlated with health and adjustment, distinct from an organizational climate, a debate over religious labels, or a nursing intervention.[3]

Unit

One person's score on a spiritual well-being scale

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Scored with the Spiritual Well-Being Scale and related self-report instruments summing religious and existential items

A dimension of the person that nursing attends to as part of holistic care, expressed as a patient's need for meaning, hope, and connectedness, especially in illness and at the end of life. Reed's 1992 paper An emerging paradigm for the investigation of spirituality in nursing argued for treating spirituality as a developmental, health-related resource that clinicians can assess and support. In this field the referent is something a caregiver observes and responds to at the bedside to improve a patient's coping and health, not a workplace experience, an academic account of the sacred, or a psychometric trait.[4]

Unit

One patient's spiritual needs and resources as assessed in care

Recovery means

Supporting a patient's spiritual resources is treated as aiding coping and recovery during illness

Measured by

Appraised through nursing spiritual assessment, patient interviews, and health-related spirituality scales