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Spiritual care can be described as the ability of the health care professional to be present, compassionate, openminded and comforting in support of the religious or spiritual beliefs of the patient during the provision of clinical care, and especially when religious or spiritual distress is present. Spiritual competence can be described as the non-clinical, organic knowledge, traits and abilities that inform the spiritual, religious, philosophical or transcendental worldviews and interventions of the health care professional. It is the ability of the health care professional to provide spiritual care to the patient, as well as the ability to use positive coping mechanisms to manage oneself during care provision. Spiritual incompetence can be described as the inability or unwillingness of the health care professional to address the patient's RS beliefs or distress; insensitivity toward the RS beliefs, practices or distress of the patient; ignorance of the diversity of patients' RS beliefs; inability or unwillingness to separate one's personal RS beliefs, practices and distress from those of the patient. It also includes the inability of health care professionals to positively self-manage the work stresses resulting from care provision. Religious beliefs and practices are the organized collection of sacred experiences, philosophies, dogmas, values and rituals shared with others of like mind, used to express one’s relationship to a higher or controlling power or to express one’s spirituality. Spiritual beliefs can be described as universal but complex human concepts about understanding the ultimate description, meaning, and value of one’s existence and sacredness. This description of spiritual beliefs also includes patients who do not have any traditional beliefs, such as agnostics (i.e. those who do not know if God exists) and atheists (i.e. those who do not believe that God exists). While spiritual beliefs can be dynamic and organic in that the beliefs can change with time, understanding, interpretations and contexts, some researchers have noted that it is possible to be spiritual without being religious, and vice versa. Religious or spiritual distress describes the negative coping attitudes and behaviors resulting from fractured or disempowered concepts about one’s existence and value to God or a higher power, perceptions of a cruel, distant or nonexistent God or higher power, and beliefs in spiritual guilt and punishment during life and after death.