Cultural Safety and Spiritual Care

This chapter has an anthropological focus and looks at the evidence for culturally safe spiritual care in palliative care and suggests ways to advocate for non-discriminatory spiritual care education within palliative care. It introduces the concept of cultural safety and its link to the concept of power, which is not well understood by healthcare professionals seeking to provide culturally appropriate care. This also has implications for spiritual care education, which needs to consider the potential bias in the representation and understanding of spiritual care in current research and education. The case study adds an ethical dimension to the discussion of appropriate care versus culturally safe care that is helpful in opening up the discussion of cultural safety and culturally safe spiritual care.