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Users show a growing interest in expanding the implementation of digital tools as a support of technical and management issues in healthcare. This medical care has focused on telemedicine but does not include the recognition of needs as an important part of patient-centred healthcare. Nurses interact with patients at critical times in their life journeys, including birth and death, which are historical events linked with religious beliefs. Furthermore, large migration flows have led to multicultural societies in which religion and spirituality are experienced in distinct ways by different people. Finally, most healthcare professionals lack the proper skills to handle the spiritual needs of their patients, especially for core and digital competences. This article shows the results of qualitative research applying as a research tool an open-ended questionnaire, which allows detecting the educational needs for nurses' interventions aimed at providing spiritual support to their patients using digital tools. The results obtained reveal that nurses need education and training on fundamental spiritual concepts and digital competencies to meet the multiple demands of their patients' spiritual needs. Finally, we present an open digital educational proposal for the development of competencies for nurses and other health professionals to provide spiritual care with the support of digital tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, there has be a close relationship between the nursing services and spiritual care provision to patients, arising due to the evolvement of many hospitals and nursing programmes from faith-based institutions and religious order nursing. With increasing secularism, these relationships are less entwined. Nonetheless, as nurses typically encounter patients at critical life events, such as receiving bad news or dying, nurses frequently understand the need and requirement for both spiritual support and religious for patients and families during these times. Yet there are uncertainties, and nurses can feel ill-equipped to deal with patients' spiritual needs. Little education or preparation is provided to these nurses, and they often report a lack of confidence within this area. The development of this confidence and the required competencies is important, especially so with increasingly multicultural societies with diverse spiritual and religious needs. In this manuscript, we discuss initial field work carried out in preparation for the development of an Erasmus Plus educational intervention, entitled from Cure to Care Digital Education and Spiritual Assistance in Healthcare. Referring specifically to post-COVID spirituality needs, this development will support nurses to respond to patients' spiritual needs in the hospital setting, using digital means. This preliminary study revealed that while nurses are actively supporting patients' spiritual needs, their education and training are limited, non-standardised and heterogeneous. Additionally, most spiritual support occurs within the context of a Judeo-Christian framework that may not be suitable for diverse faith and non-faith populations. Educational preparation for nurses to provide spiritual care is therefore urgently required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a recent decision of the ECJ on state derogation from the age discrimination principle contained in the Employment Equality (`Framework') Directive 2000/78/EC. The case, Palacios de la Villa v. Cortefiel Servicios SA, originating from Spain, involved a challenge to legislation permitting for compulsory retirement in collective agreements. It also examines a similar British challenge, due in the ECJ sometime in 2009, and comparative case law from the United States, where federal age discrimination law has been in place since 1967. It concludes that the decision in Palacios de Ia Villa, rejecting the challenge: (1) departed from established ECJ jurisprudence and signalled a new deference to derogation in the field of age discrimination; (2) is out of line with US law; and (3) in any case should not threaten the British challenge. However, it also concludes that lawmakers in Europe and the US generally consider age discrimination to be a lesser wrong than discrimination on other grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To identify predictors of sexual satisfaction in patients with advanced cancer and their family caregivers., Methods: Cross-sectional study using baseline survey data from a randomized controlled trial in six European countries. Patients with advanced cancer and their family caregiver completed measures on sexual satisfaction (one item from Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy - General questionnaire for patients and Caregiver Quality of Life Index-Cancer scale for family caregivers) and health-related characteristics. Multivariable linear regressions were performed for all predictors (identified based on literature) with sexual satisfaction as dependent variable., Results: The sample comprised 431 patient-family caregiver dyads. Patients with prostate or gynecological cancer reported lower sexual satisfaction (respectively B = -0.267 95% CI: -1.674, -0.594 and B = -0.196, 95% CI -2.103, -0.452). Higher emotional (B = 0.278, 95% CI 0.024, 0.057) physical (B = 0.305, 95% CI 0.012, 0.025) and social functioning (B = 0.151, 95% CI 0.001, 0.013), global health (B = 0.356, 95% CI 0.007, 0.013) and social wellbeing (B = 0.161, 95% CI 0.013, 0.082) among patients were associated with higher sexual satisfaction. Among family caregivers, sexual satisfaction was lower with increased age (B = -0.142, 95% CI -0.022, -0.004). Higher emotional functioning (B = 0.027, 95% CI 0.011, 0.043) and quality of life (B = 0.165, 95% CI -0.165, 0.716) were associated with higher sexual satisfaction in family caregivers., Conclusions: The results underscore that sexual wellbeing of patients and family caregivers is related to health related factors in physical, emotional, and social domains. Patients and family caregivers could benefit from a dyadic approach to address sexual wellbeing., (© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)