Spiritual HistoryThe next phase of the spiritual assessment is taking a spiritual history. The goal of the spiritual history is to invite the patient to talk about spiritual issues if that patient wishes, to help the clinician diagnose spiritual distress, and to identify the patient’s spiritual resources of strength. Clinicians who develop the patient’s treatment of care plan do the spiritual history. In comparison to spiritual screening, it has been recommended that clinicians have some formal training in taking a spiritual history. Formal training would include instruction in the use of a standardized clinical tool. A number of these tools exist such as the FICA, SPIRIT, and HOPE.