Integrating health justice into the biopsychosocial-spiritual model to promote well-being

Abstract

Since the onset of the pandemic and murder of George Floyd, the realities of social determinants of health, the need for health justice and antiracism have been featured more prominently in our daily work in healthcare. There is increasing evidence that we must focus our efforts on retaining all within healthcare and in particular those from marginalised groups to ensure our ability to: care for our increasingly diverse patient populations, address health inequities and improve the health of our patients and communities. Thus, if we truly want to recruit and retain a diverse healthcare workforce that reflects our diverse patient population, we need to create a culture of respect and inclusion and a place where each individual can thrive. The biopsychosocial-spiritual framework is one model that we can use. In 2013, in Geneva, a global consensus developed a set of standards and recommended strategies to provide whole person care and spiritual care across the health continuum, not only for palliative care. Integrating health justice into the biopsychosocial-spiritual model to promote well-being, we believe we will create a culture of respect and inclusion for each healthcare worker to thrive and define/renew their meaning and purpose in medicine in hopes to retain and recruit a diverse healthy workforce to provide high-quality whole person care for our diverse patient population, especially those from historically marginalised groups, and create sustainable strategies to promote health justice.