Chaplain as "Hopeful Presence": Working with Dying People

Abstract

This study examines the clinical experience of 20 palliative care chaplains. Using Grounded Theory with unstructured individual interviews and group work, the study aims to understand how palliative care chaplains work with dying people at the point when it has been decided to cease active treatment, the point where they risk losing hope and falling into despair. Analysing the data, four "moments" in the chaplain's being-with dying people are identified as modes of presence: "evocative presence"; "accompanying presence"; "comforting presence"; "hopeful presence." These four moments focus attention on how the quality of a chaplain's presence may help a dying person develop "a hopeful manner" in which hope may be reconfigured into an attribute of being. It is concluded that spiritual care demands a degree of presence such that it may be appropriate to regard presence as the mode of spiritual care for people who are dying.