Methodology of a Study Assessing a New Curriculum Designed to Teach Australian Final Year Medical Students How to Assess Patients' Spiritual Needs.

Many physicians believe that spiritual care is a necessary component of holistic medical care. Despite the apparent importance of spiritual care, very few Australian medical schools include such content in their curricula. We used data from two previous research projects to develop the evidence base for an Australian medical school curriculum for spiritual care training. This curriculum paper describes the content and delivery of pilot workshops, assessment of their efficacy, along with details of the learning journey for both the students and the medical educator. Learning needs were identified in a pre-workshop interview with a simulated patient. Each student had the opportunity to demonstrate their new spiritual history-taking skills, during the workshop and in a formative assessment in the weeks following their training. Our aim for this paper is to share our methodology and our curriculum. We also describe how we approached the assessment of its efficacy, the outcome of which will be presented in a subsequent paper. We hope this will assist other educators in adopting this model of teaching spiritually focused holistic patient care.