Understanding, assessing, and intervening in the spiritual nature of medical events: theological and theoretical perspectives

Abstract

ABSTRACTThat professional spiritual care practitioners are required to work in and communicate in secular healthcare is an increasing reality in this profession. However, the theological nature of spiritual care practitioners’ work does not always lend itself to easy translation into terms standard to healthcare. This is in part due to healthcare’s universal dependence on empirical science to determine its norms of care. Spiritual care practitioners therefore need to find ways to describe and justify their practices for other healthcare professionals. This article seeks to do precisely this by articulating a philosophical theory about the spiritual nature of medical events. This article furthermore develops a clinical tool for assessing a client’s progress in integrating the event into the fabric of their life. The result is there is now a way forward for understanding spiritual care practitioners’ theological work in secular contexts.