Religion and spirituality helped relatives of palliative care patients cope, small Turkish study finds

Relatives of palliative care patients in a new qualitative study described religion and spirituality as central resources that helped them cope with the emotional and existential strain of caregiving, while also reporting that the spiritual support they received from healthcare institutions fell short of what they needed.

The study, published in BMC Palliative Care, was led by Tuba Karabey and Kübra Nur Uçar and published on 23 October 2026. The researchers used a qualitative descriptive design, conducting semi-structured interviews with five relatives of patients receiving care in the palliative care unit of a university hospital in Türkiye.

The analysis generated five overarching themes and ten subthemes. These captured participants’ experiences of the emotional journey of caregiving, religion and spirituality as multidimensional coping resources, transformation in perceptions of death and life, spiritual care needs and expectations, and meaning-making beyond the caregiving experience.

According to the results, participants described caregiving as emotionally demanding yet meaningful. Religion and spirituality fostered resilience, emotional relief, acceptance, and hope as relatives navigated the challenges of supporting a family member through life-threatening illness.

The palliative care experience also appeared to reshape how relatives thought about death itself. Participants reported a transformed understanding of death as a natural transition, alongside an increased appreciation of life. The authors note that this process of meaning-making and adaptation to death was facilitated by the religious and spiritual frameworks participants drew upon.

Despite recognizing spirituality as an essential component of holistic care, participants perceived institutional spiritual care as insufficient. They expressed the need for greater spiritual support from healthcare professionals, pointing to a gap between the spiritual dimension of their experience and the care actually provided.

The authors conclude that religion and spirituality were central resources that helped relatives cope with the emotional and existential challenges of the palliative care process. They argue that the findings highlight important unmet spiritual care needs and emphasize the value of integrating structured, person-centered spiritual care into routine palliative care practice.

The study’s authors are explicit about its limitations. Given the small, context-specific sample of five relatives at a single university hospital in Türkiye, the findings should be interpreted as exploratory and warrant confirmation in larger and more diverse qualitative studies. The interviews capture the perspectives of relatives rather than patients themselves, and the researchers note that qualitative evidence exploring how relatives of palliative care patients perceive religion, spirituality, and death has remained limited, which motivated the study.

The research was published as open access and, at the time of posting, appears as a version shared early to provide faster access to peer-reviewed, accepted research, subject to further edits before the final Version of Record.

Subject of Research: Relatives' perspectives on religion, spirituality, and death in palliative care

Article Title: Palliative care patients’ relatives’ perspectives on religion, spirituality, and death: a qualitative study

Article References: Karabey, T., & Uçar, K. N. (2026). Palliative care patients’ relatives’ perspectives on religion, spirituality, and death: a qualitative study. BMC Palliative Care. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12904-026-02290-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12904-026-02290-y

Keywords: palliative care, spirituality, religion, caregivers, qualitative research, death, thematic analysis, spiritual care, Türkiye, end-of-life, Palliative, care