Disasters take different forms, but their impact on the communities they affect is devastating

Disasters take different forms, but their impact on the communities they affect is devastating. Importantly, these disasters affect individuals as well as entire communities when they occur significantly impacting their daily operations. Healthcare practitioners are also challenged by these occurrences as their practice commonly interacts with the affected persons (Merin et al., 2010). Natural disasters specifically relate directly to spiritual issues that are considered during disasters. Most spiritual concepts describe these disasters as engineered by spiritual powers and therefore should be accepted with all their consequences (Merin et al., 2010; Bruce & Stajduhar, 2013). Communities sharing this belief tend to accept the disasters as fate and sometimes refuse care after these tragedies. Providers through profiling should be able to provide care through identifying with the patient’s realities.
While in the context of spirituality, nurses are tasked with the role of providing this form of care to the community, coworkers as well as to the patients (Bruce & Stajduhar, 2013). An integral part of spiritual care is acceptance of the concepts in the belief as presented by the patient or coworker. Importantly, community health nurses are not expected to judge spiritual decisions, rather, their response should be neutral and supportive (Sawatzky & Pesut, 2005; Bruce & Stajduhar, 2013). Further, access to mentors is essential in religious doctrines making the role of the nurses to ensure that the practitioners are able to access these people (Sawatzky & Pesut, 2005). Significantly, most religions have practices that are considered to compliment belief in these doctrines, therefore, the nurse can take the initiative to assist patients, coworkers or community members in these practices (Sawatzky & Pesut, 2005). The role of nurses is essential for development of spirituality in the medical and community settings as demonstrated in this write-up.
References
Bruce, A., & Stajduhar, K. I. (2013). Spiritual Care in Nursing. Spirituality in Hospice Palliative Care, 41.
Merin, O., Ash, N., Levy, G., Schwaber, M. J., & Kreiss, Y. (2010). The Israeli field hospital in Haiti—ethical dilemmas in early disaster response. New England Journal of Medicine, 362(11), e38.
Sawatzky, R., & Pesut, B. (2005). Attributes of spiritual care in nursing practice. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 23(1), 19-33.