The Frontiers of Pastoral Clinical Education

Abstract

work of the Institute of Religion in the Texas Medical Center. From that point I should like for us to look backward briefly at the history of pastoral clinical training and then forward to the opportunities and responsibilities which lie ahead. The Texas Medical Center is located in Houston, Texas. was conceived as a means of integrating and cobrdinating education, research and patient care as a health team, so that the citizens of the entire state might have the best possible facilities for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. The Texas Medical Center occupies 164 acres with schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry and various hospital and medical facilities. Its present investments are more than $74,000,000 and probably will double within a few years. It is composed at present of Baylor University College of Medicine, the University of Texas Dental College, M. D. Anderson Cancer and Tumor Research Hospital, four general hospitals, two children's hospitals, two schools of nursing, a postgraduate school of medicine, the school of public health, the proposed new City-County Hospital, the Jesse H. Jones Library and soon probably two mental hospitals. Nearby and to be cooperating in the program is the Memorial Baptist Hospital and probably later the Veterans Administration Hospitals. The Texas Medical Center is fast becoming one of the foremost medical centers in America and the world. The clinical situation thus provided for training in the field of religion and health is unusually extensive, perhaps unexcelled. Ever since 1936 when Dr. Seward Hiltner published Religion and Health for the commission of that name in the Federal Council