Our vision
This vision “will inform the next stage of my spiritual care and contribute to and inspire my practice.” — senior nurse
The vision for the Oxford Centre for Spirituality and Wellbeing (OxCSWell) is for the development of evidence-based, compassionate and holistic care which encourages addressing not only the symptoms of a person’s illness but working with each person as a whole, offering compassionate and respectful care which includes awareness of their spiritual and religious needs and how to work with them.
This vision is undergirded by research, training and supporting NHS and social care staff.
Our approach
We focus on the development and dissemination of an integrated and holistic model of care. Our purpose is to generate practice-based evidence of the benefits of an integrated approach to care. The evidence will underpin the development of training for staff, to equip and support them to provide spiritual care as a necessary dimension of person-centred holistic care.
Our research
Research among both mental health and community health care patients (1) has:
- Produced significant evidence that spirituality in the form of psychospiritual care can be a source of support, inspiration, hope and recovery.
- Provided evidence which suggests that, whilst there is a developing interest in the UK and elsewhere to incorporate spiritual understandings within health care practice, in reality there is a significant gap between theory and practice. It is this gap that our ongoing work aims to address.
(1) National Spirituality and Mental Health Forum (2011); Knowing our own Minds (1997) ; Strategies for Living (2000); Somerset Spirituality Project (2002); One Chance to Get it Right’ End of Life Care Strategy (2014).
