The spiritual guide who accompanies patients at the end of life

There is a team of people in the province of Malaga who are specifically dedicated to improving the last days of the lives of people who are terminally ill. And here it is not about medical care, but about emotional, social and spiritual aspects. One of the people who is part of this team is Helena Chapinal, a social health worker from the Cudeca foundation home care team, who has been working with palliative patients since 2021 and confirms the importance of this type of care.

The service forms part of La Caixa Foundation's programme for the comprehensive care of people with advanced illnesses which, through its spiritual accompaniment guide, deals with religious or spiritual situations that health workers often do not know how to help with as they do not know each religion in depth.

This guide of more than 200 pages includes 14 religions and is used throughout Spain. Since its inception, this programme has already attended to more than 300,000 patients and represents a further step in personal care in the last days of life.

Helena Chapinal herself tells SUR how in her first days at Cudeca Foundation she realised that this guide was essential in her work routine: "Among the first people I cared for was a patient from China who was in her final phase and I wanted to organise with the mother everything involved in the death of her child, but I noticed that one day we were not understanding each other. As soon as I discussed it with a colleague and she showed me the guide, I understood that I could use it to learn about the culture and their religion. When I read and studied it I realised that in their religion talking about death is like calling it. I became aware of how necessary it is for us to understand each other and the patients because everyone lives their condition and their life in a different way," says the social worker.

Among the sections of this guide, different aspects of each religion are explained, such as origin, doctrine, moral belief, behaviour, commitments, practices or rites; as well as death, food, objectives, organisation of the religious community and other resources that may be useful for professionals working with them.

"In a place like Malaga, which is becoming more and more international, we meet people of different religions. It is not that they are the majority, but they themselves do not express their needs to us because they tend to believe that we will not understand them. For us it is fundamental in palliative care to be able to attend to all needs in a personalised way. The spiritual and religious aspects are undoubtedly part of what is essential for a person to feel comfortable in their last days of life," says social worker Helena Chapinal.

The spiritual accompaniment guide also offers psychological and social intervention to complement healthcare. They work with relatives and patients to help them cope with the illness, offer care to people affected by bereavement, support health professionals on issues such as communication in difficult situations and have a team of volunteers who accompany and add human values to end-of-life care, responding to the personal and social needs of both the patient and their family. These actions are carried out throughout Spain in specific places such as hospitals or social entities such as Cudeca, which focuses on palliative care.

In this way, patients living this end-of-life situation feel much more understood in their last days: "When we show them that we know about their religion, they feel much better cared for and are not afraid to talk about it, even if it is unknown to others," concludes Helena Chapinal.