The Language of Spirituality in the Pathway of Care. Hope, Good Relationships, Setting Priority, Inner Space and Divine Space, If Any. Patients’ Beliefs as a Starting Point to Engage in the Pathway of Care, Kindness and Compassion

Abstract

As we know, NM, or better narrative healthcare, focuses on the interaction between patients and healthcare professionals, especially across moments of disease starting from when the disease first manifested. It gives voice and meanings to the way the patient lives the disease, how the disease and the patient are treated and to critical aspects that might suggest unmet needs in healthcare pathways (Greenhalgh and Hurwitz 1999). Narratives can be collected either through reflective writing (which itself elicits a therapeutic effect on the person writing) or through verbal testimony. The narratives we collect are authentic and do not belong to the fiction or literature. The aim of NM is to create an aligned relationship between carers and patients to allow patients to find the factors for coping, i.e. to master the stress induced by the disease, the rupture of a previous status of wellbeing, with its partial loss.