Background and Objective: The Sound Heart Model(SHM) is the result of two decades of interdisciplinary research, approved by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, and has a clinical protocol. An article in the Journal of Education and Ethics in Nursing attempted to change the protocol and reduce it to the nursing process. The aim of this study is explaining the methodological considerations in the necessity of adhering to the SHM protocol.
Method: In this critical study, the content of the published article was compared and analyzed with international standards for clinical protocol writing (such as SPIRIT), Islamic jurisprudential and ethical principles, methodological and legal considerations, and the approved protocol of the SHM.
Findings: Reducing the SHM protocol to the nursing process, limiting the provision of spiritual care to nurses, contradicts the content of the SHM. The SHM allows the implementation of spiritual care, for trained, clinically competent, and licensed spiritual mentors. In obtaining a spiritual history, it emphasizes spiritual self-evaluation, avoiding "inquiry into beliefs" or "confession of sin." It considers "measuring religiosity" - an individual's relationship with God - to be completely contrary to Islamic jurisprudence. It does not recommend recording spiritual distress - which can be considered a major sin and sometimes subject to punishment - in any way. The authors of the article, by reducing counseling sessions, have allowed its implementation without formal training and obtaining clinical license. By ignoring jurisprudential principles and methodological considerations in the design and validation of the model's clinical protocol, they have ignored the developed steps of the model (increasing spiritual knowledge, giving meaning to the four connections, strengthening adaptation, and motivating for self-care) and have limited spiritual care only to the development of the four connections.
Conclusion: Spiritual care is a team and specialized activity that requires spiritual mentors to adhere to the model's standard protocol. Changing the content and method of implementing the SHM without the written permission of the theorist lacks methodological validity and is a clear violation of the copyright law.