Spirituality in palliative care: Evidence of counselling

When spiritual needs are effectively elaborated, they can help the individual to find meaning, sustain hope, and accept death in the context of the end of life. Counselling has been one of the therapies that is mostused to meet these needs. The aim of this work is to offer evidence on the efficacy of this therapy to improve the spirituality of patients attended in several health devices. In order to achieve this objective, a three-week intervention was carried out with 131 home care and hospitalized patients. The mean age was 70.61 (SD = 11.17); 51.1% were men. Spirituality was assessed before and after the intervention, and a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to study the differences between these two moments, together with follow-up ANOVAs. Results indicated a positive effect, with a large effect size, F(3,110) = 31.266, p less than .001, E2 = .460. This study can be the starting point for the implementation of intervention programs in the context of palliative care