There is an undeniable relationship between spirituality and health, and taking a spiritual history is a simple way to increase the focus on spiritual care. Method: Pre/post-test intervention study. Questionnaires were administered before implementation of a spiritual assessment (pre-test, n = 106), and afterwards (post-test, n = 103). Results: Despite a difficult implementation process the number of consultation requests for the Department of Spiritual and Pastoral Care increased from 2 in the

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... pre-test period to 33 in the post-test period. After adjusting for patient characteristics, we found no differences between pre-test and post-test measurements on the FACIT-Sp-12 total score or nurses' support regarding dealing with illness; we did, however, find a significant decrease on the subscale Faith of the FACIT-Sp-12 and on nurses' support regarding questions about purpose and meaning (97% to 83%). Relevance to clinical practice: Taking a spiritual history may contribute to the spiritual care of patients in a general hospital in the shape of more frequent referrals to the spiritual caregiver (chaplain), but further research is needed to determine whether this also means that nurses provide less spiritual care.