Nursing & Health Care success at the 2012 BMA Book Awards
Published: 1 December 2014
Spiritual Care for Healthcare Professionals is a new textbook published by Radcliff and launched at the University of Glasgow in November 2011. Selected from among 681 entries the book was one of five textbooks shortlisted in the Basis of Medicine section of the British Medical Association Book Awards announced on 13th September 2012.
The new textbook was written by Rev. David Mitchell, the Programme Leader for Healthcare Chaplaincy in Nursing & Health Care, University of Glasgow; Ewan Kelly, Programme Director Spiritual Care and Healthcare Chaplaincy NHS Education for Scotland; and Tom Gordon, Chair of the Chaplaincy Training Advisory Group, Scotland.
This book offers a practical and in-depth exploration of spiritual care as it can be practiced by all healthcare professionals and supports the Postgraduate Certificate in Healthcare Chaplaincy and spiritual care teaching in the School. In his forward Stephen Thornton CBE, Chief Executive of the Healthcare Foundation, describes it is “a book that fills a gap for all those seeking to understand the spiritual components of healthcare and how to meet them.”
The authors, including Rev. David Mitchell, attended the British Medical Association in London to receive a ‘Highly Commended’ certificate for their book. The textbook is commended as follows:
“I shall recommend this book to all healthcare professionals who want to differentiate between spiritual and religious needs of a person. This book clarifies contentious areas of spirit (soul), religion, non-religious persuasion and atheism based on science which significantly differs from religious views and facts. Reading this book would improve understanding, debate, needs of every patient (and health professional) of spiritual care and why it is helpful in clinical practice today. All Health professionals should benefit from this book.” BMA Medical Book and Patient Information Awards 2012.
The Nursing & Health Care School is very proud to offer such a successful and unique inter-professional course of study in its portfolio. While doctors, nurses and allied health professionals follow professional standards and guidelines that say spiritual care is inherent in their practice what that spiritual care is appears vague and unclear. Working in partnership with NHS Education for Scotland the University of Glasgow developed the programme of professional education in Spiritual Care in Healthcare. Originally developed as a programme of courses for healthcare chaplains the courses are now available to all healthcare professionals. The courses enable healthcare professionals to study what providing spiritual care actually means and how it can be integrated into their professional practice.
First published: 1 December 2014