Investigating and Challenging Spiritual Deficiency within Canadian Health Care Educational Leadership Models

Abstract

Attempts to bring the spiritual dimension of health into Canadian Health Care Educational Leadership models encounter great resistance. Discourses about “spirituality” are often silenced within healthcare educational leadership to reduce misunderstandings. At least one author has suggested that health professionals and policy makers not only have little understanding of spiritual life but are not familiar with the language of spirituality. The World Health Organization, for its part, has suggested in a number of places that spiritual aspects of life are relevant to health and may be important to healing. This paper investigates and challenges this spiritual deficiency, commencing with a brief literature review that supports the need to challenge spiritual deficiency within present Canadian healthcare leadership models. It then presents work by the present author in the form of a summary of her larger study that investigates and presents the need for spiritual leadership within these models. The paper ends with a brief summary of the main implications and conclusions of her wider study.