A Pilgrim's Progress: Learning to Journey with the Dying Patient

Abstract

How do clinicians begin to offer spiritual care to the dying patient? And why do they find it so hard to offer such care? In this essay, I reflect on my involvement in a course called “Exploring the spirituality of healing,” which I teach each year to medical students at the University of Auckland. In particular, I consider some of the difficult and anxiety-provoking issues I have discussed with the students about the provision of effective spiritual care for patients during their pilgrimage towards the end of life. And, in the process, I draw upon some of my own experiences –as a former nurse and fellow pilgrim, and as a person who has lost close family members to cancer.