Spiritual Care in Nursing, Midwifery and Healthcare Practice

Dear Colleagues, 

The concepts of spirituality and spiritual care have received a vast amount of attention in research and the published healthcare literature. Despite this attention spanning over three decades, providing spiritual care education for nurses and midwives remains fragmented and poorly integrated within programs. A significant milestone to support the formal integration of spiritual care education was reached in 2019 with the outputs developed as part of the Enhancing Nurses' and Midwives’ Competence in Providing Spiritual Care through Innovative Education and Compassionate Care (EPICC) Project (See https://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/epicc/). This three-year funded European project brought together nursing and midwifery educators with primary stakeholders from over 21 countries. The purpose was to explore this situation to develop a way forward that may support a more uniform and formal approach to the integration of spiritual care within programs of education across Europe and further. 

The aim of this special edition is to capture in a single compendium research, education and practice that show the reach and impact of the EPICC project’s outputs (standard, matrix, self-assessment tool, and educational resources). While this is the primary focus of this special edition, manuscripts that provide new insights into the development of spiritual care research, practice, and education will also be welcome.  

Prof. Dr. Wilfred McSherry
Prof. Dr. Linda Ross
Dr. Adam Boughey
Dr. Yanping Niu
Dr. Josephine Attard
Dr. Fazilah Twining
Dr. Aliza Damsma
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Spirituality
• Spiritual care
• Practice
• Education
• Research
• EPICC project/network