Spiritual Care, Health, and Wellbeing in Palliative Care

A special issue of Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032). This special issue belongs to the section "Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2025 | Viewed by 335

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Marie Curie Palliative Care Research, Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
Interests: spiritual wellbeing; spirituality; life-limiting conditions; chronic long-term health conditions; palliative care; end of life care; supportive care; qualitative research; ethnography; mixed methods
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Palliative care is integral to the care of people living with life-limiting conditions, and the spiritual aspect of palliative care is the key to holistic and compassionate support. This Special Issue aims to highlight and disseminate the multiplicity of research exploring the multifaceted dimensions and approaches relevant to spiritual care, health and wellbeing in the context of palliative care.

We seek to bring together a diverse collection of research papers specifically addressing spirituality in palliative care, health and wellbeing. We invite contributions related, but not limited, to the following areas:

  • The role of spirituality and religion in coping with life-threatening illnesses;
  • Assessing and enhancing spiritual care practices in palliative care settings;
  • The impact of spiritual care on the physical, emotional, psychosocial and spiritual wellbeing of patients and their families;
  • Integrating spiritual care into interprofessional palliative care teams;
  • Cultural and ethical considerations, and challenges when providing spiritual care for diverse populations;
  • Innovative approaches and interventions for addressing existential and spiritual suffering in palliative care;
  • Education and training for healthcare professionals in the delivery of spiritual care;
  • Patient and family perspectives on the importance of spiritual care in palliative settings;
  • Research methodologies and measurement tools for assessing the impact of spiritual care within palliative care.

In this Special Issue, we welcome original studies using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods, and (all kinds of) reviews.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Bella Vivat
Guest Editor

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.

Keywords

  • spiritual wellbeing
  • chronic long-term health conditions
  • palliative care
  • end-of-life care
  • supportive care

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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