A Typology of Spirituality-related Perceptions among Actors of the Medical Care System

Health definition offered by World Health Organization emphasizes the spiritual aspect of human beings in addition to his physiological dimensions. Regarding the loss of any consensual agreement on the concept of spirituality, authors of the present article believe that typology of the spirituality perceptions as they are understood by the main actors of the medical care system can be supposed as a critical entry in the conceptual explanation of spirituality.
Participators of the study include physicians, nurses, instructors of the medical ethics, social workers, hospital managements, patients and their visitors who were engaged in hospitals of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. They were selected purposefully. Required qualitative data was gathered through investigation of formal documents as well as interviews. Data analysis has been done on the basis of qualitative data analysis procedures.
Among those providing cure services, spirituality was perceived in the forms of "sacred ontology-based spirituality", "transcendental spirituality" and "horizontal spirituality". On the other hand, those receiving cure services understood spirituality as "ritual spirituality", "cultural-conventional spirituality" and "legal rightoriented spirituality" as well. While in the "sacred ontology-based spirituality" God’s doings as well as His orders are supposed to be as the ultimate sources of meaning, motivations placed behind any given action are highly emphasized in "transcendental spirituality". "Horizontal spirituality" and spirituality types identified among those receiving cure services are generally oriented toward cultural conventional combination of vertical as well as social bases of meaning.
Interconnectedness of spirituality and ethics have significant implications in their institutionalizations in medical relationships in the cultural context of Iranian society. Social actors suppose various representations as the evidences of spirituality. Yet, spirituality can promote the spirit of human if only it includes nonmaterial elements oriented toward "ideal observer". Under such a deep comprehensive understanding of spirituality one’s spirit can be released from implausible "dualities" such as death-life duality common to modern socialization and experience "unity" through application of the concepts like "philosophy of health and sickness" and "meaningfulness of existence". Achievement of mentioned multidimensional insight and its application as well require a basic reform in the procedures of modern socialization in which death is absolutely marginalized and various kinds of mechanisms are applied so that it can mentally be neglected. Mentioned mechanisms lose their utilities in the circumstances of sickness and leave patients alone in the process of rational intellectual meaning constructing of health, death and sickness as well.