Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

The Course is designed to strike a balance between providing theoretical and analytical tools to understand the link between spirituality and care and applying them to interpret their intersection in real life, focussing on care professions, especially nursing. It has three main objectives:

1. To introduce the main theoretical and analytical lenses in the study of religion, care and medical systems from a multidisciplinary perspective (sociology, nursing, anthropology, informatics, medical humanities).
2. To illustrate the crucial concepts in the study of religion, care and medical systems such as disease, illness, sickness, healing, therapeutic trajectories, humanization of care and care practices, including spiritual care, focusing on their meanings in different disciplines and how they intersect;
3. To explain how to deal with patients’ spiritual needs as well as health professionals’ religious and spirituality requests. Particular attention is paid to social-health care professionals who are supposed to be aware of their own spirituality and the system of values and beliefs that one possesses and brings into play during the course of one’s profession.

 

Knowledge and understanding:

• The Course will provide solid background knowledge of the foundational concepts of the sociology of religion, medical anthropology, medical humanities, research methodology and nursing with a focus on the theoretical and empirical understanding of interactions between spirituality and professional health-care practices.
• Students will develop the ability to formulate working hypotheses on how to approach specific professionals’ and patients’ spiritual needs relying on the debates, categories and research methodologies learnt during the Course.

Applying knowledge and understanding:

• Students will develop the ability to apply the acquired theoretical and practical competences to the study of empirical cases and specific working scenarios.
• Students will be equipped with a rich theoretical and methodological arsenal to understand and analyze complex research and professional tasks in relation to both patients’ and care professionals’ spiritual needs.

Independent judgement:

• Students will learn how to fruitfully approach theoretical essays, case studies, and other research outputs focussed on the integration between spirituality and health-care professions, settings and practices.
• Students will develop the necessary self-reflexive skills to navigate complex real life and/or professional situations concerned with the relationships between spirituality and health-care, and to further exploit this nexus in the light of broader cultural, social, economic and political processes.

Communication:

• Students will develop the ability to clearly and competently communicate the knowledge acquired during the Course with particular attention to the theoretical, conceptual, methodological and practical dimensions of the relationship between spirituality and health-care.
• Students will learn how to communicate research findings and professional best practices to both specialised audiences of researchers and/or professionals, patients, other civil society actors and organizations interested in the theme of the integration of spirituality into health-care settings as well as to other less specialised audiences.

The course – comprising 5 Online Modules, Face-to-Face Laboratory Work and Blended Mobility Activities – aims at cultural, social and organizational change in the nursing professions and other health professionals.

The added value of this Course (designed to respond particularly to nurses’ learning needs which emerged from analysis of case studies and the identification of best practices carried out by the consortium in phase 1 – I.O 1) is that it reinforces nurses’ and other health professionals’ competences and soft skills in two innovative areas:

• Welcoming multicultural patients’ spiritual-religious requests;
• Dealing with digital technologies in order to approach patients’ physical, social and religious/spiritual needs.

The interdisciplinary content of the Course will draw on the most recent subjects in ‘Education for Spirituality’, ‘Religion in Healthcare’ and in ‘Digital Education’ identified by partners as relevant for developing new interactive, methodological and relational competences as well as specific knowledge and skills in the area described above. Renewing nursing and other health professionals’ curriculum in the light of this point is crucial for reinforcing their resilience in facing continuous transformations, as triggered by COVID 19 and other possible future pandemics.

The Course will be an innovative interdisciplinary prototypical course aimed at copying with patient’s spiritual-religious demands in a digitally-empowered socio-health system.

The Course will be designed over 125 hours, divided into 3 parts:

1. E-Learning Course: Modules (70 h)

 

1. UNIR 10-hour module “Digital Skills for interaction”
2. UNITO 15-hour module “Spirituality and care in hospitals”
3. UKSWW 15-hour module “Managing religious diversity”
4. UCD 15-hour module “Spiritual nursing care interventions for end-of-life care during the COVID-19 pandemic”
5. UEx 15-hour module “Narrative Medicine”

 

1. Face-to-face laboratory work (15 h per country)

Each university locally organises practical-experience laboratories for its own students in its own language

1. Blended Mobility in UNITO

5 days Blended Mobility workshop for 5 students from the 4 countries (40 hours)

 

The Course will be evaluated through a final 10-multiple-choice questionnaire. To be able to access and successfully complete the questionnaire, students will engage with a module specific  work-plan including: the study of the material provided module; short 5-closed-questions quizzes (5 per module); participation in the e-learning platform forum during the course; and a small task chosen among written, experiential and creative types of assignments (this last task is not mandatory for the successful completion of the Course).

 

Charon R. (2008), Narrative Medicine: Honouring the Stories of illness. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cobb M., Puchalski C., and Rumbold B. (2012), Oxford textbook of Spirituality in Healthcare. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Giordan G., and Pace E. (2014), Religious Pluralism: Framing Religious Diversity in the Contemporary World. Cham: Springer.

Nazeha N., Pavagadhi D., Kyaw B.M, Car J., Jimenez G., and Tudor Car L. (2020), A Digitally Competent Health Workforce: Scoping Review of Educational Frameworks. Journal of Medical Internet Research 22(11): 22706. doi: 10.2196/22706.

Timmins F., and Caldeira S. (2019), Spirituality in Healthcare: Perspectives for Innovative Practice. Cham: Springer.

The Course enrolls students from the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society and from the Department of Sciences of Public Health and Pediatrics.