Spiritual Care in Palliative care in Turkey

Abstract

Nowadays, a general increase has been observed in chronic diseases that lead to death, such as cancer, ischemic heart and other heart diseases, stroke and hypertensive diseases, respiratory system diseases throughout the world and in our country (American Cancer Society Cancer Statistics Center, 2017; American Cancer Society Cancer Research Program, 2017; Türkiye Halk Sağlığı Kurumu [Public Health Institution Of Turkey], 2017). This also leads to an increase in the number of people who need palliative care. For this reason, the improvement of newly emerging palliative care processes in our country will provide new opportunities for people living in Turkey to reach palliative care service that we regard as a human right. In line with this purpose, issues such as the definition of palliative care, definition of spiritual care, spiritual practices in palliative care abroad, and spiritual care practice processes in palliative care in Turkey will be discussed in this chapter.