ReviewPalliative & supportive care2025
Reclaiming ritual in palliative care: A hermeneutic narrative review.
Review in Palliative & supportive care, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparing the Art of Midwifery Practice to Spiritual Care: Common Characteristics Emerging from Theoretical Models and Field Work.The journal of pastoral care & counseling : JPCC · 2026Article
- European Association for Palliative Care White Paper on spiritual care for people with neuro-oncological and neurodegenerative conditions: Integrative framework for practice, education, and research.Palliative & supportive care · 2026Review
- "I thought he had longer than that": family caregivers' experiences of grief, loss, and bereavement in residential aged care.BMC palliative care · 2025Article
- General surgery nurses' views on preoperative spiritual care: a qualitative descriptive study.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Cognitive offloading or cognitive overload? How AI alters the mental architecture of coping.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo explore the potential of incorporating personally meaningful rituals as a spiritual resource for Western secular palliative care settings. Spiritual care is recognized as critical to palliative care; however, comprehensive interventions are lacking. In postmodern societies, the decline of organized religion has left many people identifying as "no religion" or "spiritual but not religious." To assess if ritual could provide appropriate and ethical spiritual care for this growing demographic requires comprehensive understanding of the spiritual state and needs of the secular individual in postmodern society, as well as a theoretical understanding of the elements and mechanisms of ritual. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive and theoretically informed exploration of these elements through a critical engagement with heterogeneous literatures.
methodsA hermeneutic narrative review, inspired by complexity theory, underpinned by a view of understanding of spiritual needs as a complex mind-body phenomenon embedded in sociohistorical context.
resultsThis narrative review highlights a fundamental spiritual need in postmodern post-Christian secularism as need for embodied spiritual experience. The historical attrition of ritual in Western culture parallels loss of embodied spiritual experience. Ritual as a mind-body practice can provide an embodied spiritual resource. The origin of ritual is identified as evolutionary adaptive ritualized behaviors universally observed in animals and humans which develop emotional regulation and conceptual cognition. Innate human behaviors of creativity, play, and communication develop ritual. Mechanisms of ritual allow for connection to others as well as to the sacred and transcendent. SIGNIFICANCE OF
resultsNatural and innate behaviors of humans can be used to create rituals for personally meaningful spiritual resources. Understanding the physical properties and mechanisms of ritual making allows anyone to build their own spiritual resources without need of relying on experts or institutionalized programs. This can provide a self-empowering, client-centered intervention for spiritual care.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.