Spirituality and Service Design: Supporting Spiritual Care in Ontario Long-Term Care Homes

Spiritual care is crucial to the holistic care and health of a person, especially throughout the journey of aging. This study explores the role of spiritual care services in Ontario long-term care homes through a service design lens. The research involved a multi-method approach to understand the landscape of spiritual care services across Ontario, as well as the experiences of long-term care service providers. This study involved secondary analysis of an existing spiritual care questionnaire, an environmental scan of long-term care home websites, a service design questionnaire, as well as a series of multi-stakeholder co-design sessions. The results of this study reveal the diversity of spiritual care services provided across the province and share insight into the uniqueness of this service. Applying service design within this complex healthcare context demonstrated both the strengths as well as the limitations of the approach.