Hoosen, Mujeeb2025-12-042025-12-042025https://hdl.handle.net/10566/21510Traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine (TCAM) is widespread globally, with billions seeking these practices for health and wellness. Spirituality and spiritual care are essential to all TCAM and deeply connected with indigenous knowledge systems. Unani Tibb, a unique TCAM approach, integrates traditional healing practices from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, focusing on the connection between mind, body, and spirit in healing. However, the role of spirituality and spiritual care in education and practice in South Africa, and beyond, remains insufficiently emphasized. To address this, the South African Unani Tibb community calls for incorporating spiritual care into clinical practice and establishing guidelines to enhance holistic treatment. This research seeks to establish these guidelines through a two-phased sequential exploratory strategy grounded in Design-Based Research (DBR) principles. DBR emphasizes the importance of authenticity, contextual awareness, collaboration, and methodological diversity. Phase One employs a range of methodologies, including a scoping review, quantitative surveys, qualitative research, and mixed-methods, to investigate the role of spirituality and spiritual care in Unani Tibb education and practice. The research includes five interconnected studies highlighting the significant absence of spirituality and spiritual care in the Unani Tibb profession. Initial findings indicate that Unani Tibb practitioners recognise the importance of spirituality within the modality, but lack formal training, prompting calls for its inclusion in educational curricula and practice guidelines. Despite inherent spiritual care abilities, assessment and methodology challenges highlight the necessity for formalised guidelines. In Phase Two, a consensus workshop with 14 stakeholders from the Unani Tibb community developed 40 guidelines to enhance spiritual care in clinical settings. Key aspects include spiritual history-taking, spiritual care competencies, temperament analysis, personal and professional development, and advocating for better integration of spirituality in Unani Tibb. This research aims to promote ethical, holistic care and enhance future spiritual care practices within Unani Tibb and other TCAM professions, in South Africa and internationally.enDesign-Based ResearchClinical PracticeSpiritual CareUnani TibbSpiritualityThesis