Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the spiritual needs through narratives by elderly inpatients. Spiritual needs are closely connected with the individual's life, so this research takes a form of a case study. Participants were five elderly inpatients. This paper focuses on a narrative of Mrs. A who is a 93 years old woman. The researcher kept in contact with her for five months, and unstructured interviews were held sixteen times. The researcher read the narrative texts repeatedly and from them extracted of the context of the interviewed woman's spiritual needs.
As a result, the following spiritual needs emerged: “I want to find the meaning of my life.” ; “I want to taste my actual feeling of living.” ; “I want to ask others' pardon to meet them again in the next world after my death.” From the findings of this research, the importance of listening to the narratives of elderly people including recollections of their lives, and the importance of their daily care were found. The elderly are losing many things as they grow older. Therefore, their “actual feelings of living” experienced in their lives such as eating and excretion, which seem to us very natural, have supported their lives vividly.
