Clinical Pastoral Education Research Articles

A time study of ACPE certified educators

This is a descriptive, quantitative, cross-sectional study of how ACPE Certified Educators (CEs) allocated their time among varied responsibilities in calendar year 2021. Using a structured interview assisted survey instrument, 25 CEs at academic medical centers/university teaching hospitals were surveyed via Zoom/Phone. Results found a median commitment of 58% of time on clinical pastoral education (CPE) activities (38% to teaching and 20% to administration). CEs (7) who also serve as Spiritual Care Department directors/managers spent 45% on CPE and 30% on department activities. Sixteen of the CEs strongly or somewhat agreed that CE involvement in direct patient/family/staff care was important, yet median CE involvement in such care was 5%. Future studies should examine CE time commitment levels in a broader sample of ACPE accredited institutions.

A Letter to My Friend and Chaplain Colleague Imam Sohaib Sultan, Zichrono Livracha (of Blessed Memory).

I am a Jewish chaplain and I felt moved to write this letter to my esteemed colleague Imam Sohaib Sultan, of blessed memory. Sohaib and I each experienced our first unit of Clinical Pastoral Education together as part of the same cohort in the summer of 2008. Sohaib died tragically in 2021. Here, I reflect on how we might respond to the current Israel-Hamas War.

Teaching Interreligious Spiritual Care

ABSTRACT How can spiritual care faculty and clinical pastoral educators (CPE) help students integrate knowledge, capacities, and skills for practicing interreligious spiritual care? The newly adopted learning outcomes in CPE teach students specialized knowledge about spiritual care. Knowledge is then put into practice at the second level of learning in CPE. Using many of these CPE learning outcomes in graduate school spiritual care courses standardizes clinical learning across graduate degree programs and CPE units for students seeking ordination/endorsement as religious leaders and chaplains. I describe and illustrate experiential teaching strategies using the CPE learning outcomes most relevant for teaching spiritual care in graduate courses, to do with self-care, interreligious respect, interreligious listening, and self-reflexivity. I demonstrate how online discussion forums offer unique opportunities for qualitatively assessing how students are integrating knowledge and demonstrating interpersonal skills needed for interreligious spiritual care.

Reflections from a hospital chaplain

ABSTRACT Jennifer Reek works at a hospital in the American Southwest. The hospital serves varied cultures: Native American, Hispanic, white, and various combinations of those, with an intriguing mix of religious and spiritual practice. The following reflections, on her experiences as a hospital chaplain over the past several years, are at the invitation of her former thesis advisor and now friend of many years, David Jasper. They are an adaptation of weekly reflections submitted over a year and a half of Clinical Pastoral Education training.

Chaplain development in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) in healthcare settings in England: A mixed methods study.

Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is the predominant specialised training for healthcare chaplains in several national contexts. CPE is spiritual care education that uses experiential and action-reflection learning methods to train diverse participants. However, CPE is not established for chaplaincy training in England. Currently, chaplaincy education in England lacks standardisation, leading to inequalities in entry into the profession and inconsistent training and career pathways. CPE has the potential to address these issues. We examined changes associated with participating in CPE and participants' perceptions about their learning experience. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of CPE as a viable chaplaincy education model in healthcare settings in England. Convergent mixed methods involved pre-post surveys and focus group sessions to examine the experiences and development of seven chaplains, with diverse experience levels and backgrounds, who participated in the pilot CPE unit in NHS England. We integrated thematic analysis and survey results. We identified four overarching themes: Development pathways, Catalysts for development, Advantages of CPE for chaplaincy education, and Experiences with CPE course structure. Participants developed along various pathways: confidence, reflective practice, emotional intelligence, listening and attending skills, diversity in chaplaincy care, and spiritual assessment. Survey results confirmed several themes, indicating gains in chaplaincy capabilities, emotional intelligence, and counselling self-efficacy. Participants emphasised the advantages and effectiveness of the CPE model. Quantitative and qualitative findings converged to provide rich evidence that CPE generated personal and professional development, improving chaplaincy practice. General learning pathways moved from personal development, through the interpersonal learning context, and translated into chaplain competency. Participants endorsed CPE, as a robust and effective training model for chaplaincy in the English context, for those entering the profession and experienced chaplains alike. We conceptualised preliminary models for chaplain development and learning pathways in CPE that need validation and refinement by future research.

'Can You See What I Say?' Beyond Words

Empathic relational communication is a key competency in spiritual care for establishing a trusting pastoral relationship. Ministry with d/Deaf persons requires a deeper level of relational skill, where attentiveness to sign language, non-manual features, visual cues and facial grammar are important for meaningful pastoral relatedness. It is widely recognized that d/Deaf persons experience higher than average healthcare access barriers and associated psychological impacts, and therefore spiritual need. In addition, d/Deaf persons develop a non-auditory approach to emotional expression and communication. The competencies of clinical pastoral education (CPE) provide a natural context to further develop the necessary deeper relational skills for healthcare ministry. This article draws on the lived experiences of a chaplain for the d/Deaf engaged in CPE and a CPE educator, in order to highlight current deficiencies in pastoral care for d/Deaf persons, and to explore and illustrate how relational empathy and spiritual connection can be deepened among d/Deaf persons in healthcare by developing the competencies of CPE.Supplementary resource: video format in American, British and Irish sign languagesView ASL Keith Nolan videoView BSL Ayesha Gavin videoView ISL John Patrick Doherty video

임상목회교육의 목회상담적 자원 및 활용

임상목회교육의 목회상담적 자원 및 활용

Chaplain, Can You Carry This Cross for Me? A Reflection on My First Year of CPE-Clinical Pastoral Education.

What is the meaning of Sacrament? How can a Professional Orthodox Christian Lay Chaplain participate in sacramental ministry without the grace given by ordination? This piece on Christina Hanegraaff's first year as a Clinical Pastoral Education Resident explores this question through reflecting on her experiences of entering into people's suffering and carrying their cross alongside them-a modern-day Simon of Cyrene.

Anton Boisen: Madness, Mysticism, and the Origins of Clinical Pastoral Education. By Sean J. LaBat. Lanham: Lexington Books / Fortress Academic, 2021. vii + 181 pp. $66.88 cloth; $35.59 paper.

Anton Boisen: Madness, Mysticism, and the Origins of Clinical Pastoral Education. By Sean J. LaBat. Lanham: Lexington Books / Fortress Academic, 2021. vii + 181 pp. $66.88 cloth; $35.59 paper.

Improving access to palliative care clinical pastoral education

Palliative care is interprofessional care for seriously ill people. Many clergy, religious leaders, and hospice and palliative care chaplains of color and minority religious backgrounds desire clinical palliative care education. This manuscript presents findings from a three-year quality improvement project which included the development of a palliative care specialty ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care and Education (ACPE) accredited program at an academic medical center. The program was designed to improve spiritual care provision in palliative care at the institution and to facilitate the participation of clergy and spiritual leaders of color and minority religious groups. Forty-six students participated in 53 400-h clinical pastoral education units. Strategies from medical education literature were employed to address obstacles to CPE participation including a racially and religiously diverse CPE advisory group, financial assistance, flexible learning (e.g. hybrid, asynchronous), and clinical placement agreements at places of employment. Upon completion of the program students provided written feedback, participated in a structured exit interview and completed a survey. Data were reviewed for common themes and results report student perceptions about the strategies utilized.

Implementing Spiritual Care in the Pediatric Complex Care Clinic.

A project integrated a Clinical Pastoral Education Fellow into a clinic designed to treat children with medical complexity (CMC). The integration of a chaplain into the care team fulfilled the goal of increasing accessibility to spiritual care through a quality improvement project and seemed to positively affect patients and the interdisciplinary team itself. These efforts demonstrate the need for research to better understand the relationship between spiritual screenings, interventions, and outcomes for CMC patients.

The Potential of Clinical Pastoral Education in Facilitating Contextual, Effective and Affordable Pastoral Ministry for Impoverished Black Communities in South Africa

ABSTRACT Clinical Pastoral Education is an important part of an educational process of pastoral ministry. It is also a gift that can potentially contribute meaningfully to facilitating contextual, affordable pastoral ministry for Black communities in South Africa. This article argues that for CPE to have space and a future it must be contextual and liberating. It must respond appropriately to the conditions, realities and needs of Black communities who bear the brunt of poverty and associated socio-economic-cultural and conditions. In the U.S.A context, CPE has always been a response to the conditions, realities and needs of the Americans. Equally, in the South African context, CPE cannot afford to ignore “the living human documents” (the living human web), whose realities are different from those of Americans. CPE must acknowledge that it is part of the broader field of pastoral care, which is based on Western-dominated theories. It must be inclusive and listen carefully to Black communities.

Delivering Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Remotely: Educators' Views and Perspectives During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond.

Many Clinical Pastoral Education programs pivoted to remote delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our survey explored educators’ preparedness, self-efficacy, and views regarding remote Clinical Pastoral Education. Few respondents were either very (14.2%) or not at all (16.5%) prepared. Most were confident facilitating remote learning (69.8%–88.5%), believing remote Clinical Pastoral Education can achieve outcomes equivalent to in-person (59.1%). Six qualitative themes emerged: educator development, educator challenges, remote Clinical Pastoral Education efficacy, remote group dynamics, clinical practice/supervision implications, and benefits and opportunities.

Learning Compassion and Meditation: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Experience of Novice Meditators.

Over the last decade, numerous interventions and techniques that aim to engender, strengthen, and expand compassion have been created, proliferating an evidence base for the benefits of compassion meditation training. However, to date, little research has been conducted to examine individual variation in the learning, beliefs, practices, and subjective experiences of compassion meditation. This mixed-method study examines changes in novice meditators’ knowledge and contemplative experiences before, during, and after taking an intensive course in CBCT® (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training), a contemplative intervention that is increasingly used for both inter- and intrapersonal flourishing. The participants in this study (n = 40) were Christian healthcare chaplains completing a 1-year residency in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) who learned CBCT as part of their professional chaplaincy training curriculum. Prior to and upon completion of training, we surveyed participants to assess their beliefs about the malleability of compassion, types of engagement in compassion meditation, and perceptions of the impact of taking CBCT. We also conducted in-depth interviews with a subset of participants to gain a qualitative understanding of their subjective experiences of learning and practicing compassion meditation, a key component of CBCT. We found that participants reported increases in the extent to which they believed compassion to be malleable after studying CBCT. We also found high levels of variability of individual ways of practicing and considered the implications of this for the study of contemplative learning processes. This multi-methodological approach yielded novel insights into how compassion practice and compassion-related outcomes interrelate, insights that can inform the basic scientific understanding of the experience of learning and enacting compassion meditation as a means of strengthening compassion itself.

Guardians of Childhood, Sentinels of Soul.

This article builds on an address delivered in New York City in March of 2020 to the National Conference of the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy, a professional society of clinical pastoral educators. Interweaving narrative reflections of noted authors, poets, filmmakers, and other artists with pastoral theological literature and recent genetic and social scientific research, the essay explores parameters of the soul or psyche as comprising the unique center of the self. It invites readers to a recovery of soul by means of arduous acts of introspection—revisiting lost childhood wonder, hope, memories, and dreams—and an embrace of pluralism and individual difference.

Transformational education: exploring the lasting impact of students’ clinical pastoral education experiences

“Thank you for that experience and for the ways it continues to shape who I am and how I interact in all of my life.” (S20). There has been limited research validating Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) as a learning approach to date, however, the anecdotal evidence supporting the transformative value of CPE is abundant, as demonstrated by this student response. This quality improvement project engages a thematic cross-sectional analysis of 34 students’ self-evaluative responses reporting the lasting impact of their CPE training. From the survey responses a thematic map was developed highlighting six themes of lasting impact: Spirituality, Psychotherapy, Agency, Self-Inter, Self-Intra, and Story/Narrative. These six themes overlap and intersect to provide a point of what we call “SPE alchemy”–the perfect conditions for lasting impact and transformation.

COVID-19 and Clinical Pastoral Education: How ACPE Educators Pivoted Amid the Pandemic.

Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) programs faced extraordinary challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined how ACPE-certified educators responded to maintain program delivery. Survey results (n = 210) suggested a substantial and abrupt increase in remote delivery for CPE instruction and supervised clinical practice, primarily driven by those previously fully in-person. Respondents reported abrupt changes impacted 1152 students. Participants rated their utilization and helpfulness of professional, organizational, and technology resources during the pivot and beyond.

Diversity & Spiritual Care in the Pandemic

ABSTRACT Disenfranchised grief is the experience of grief where the loss, the style of grieving, or the griever is not or cannot be sufficiently recognized. It describes well what a great many underrepresented spiritual care providers experience at times during their clinical pastoral education – feeling as if one is a stranger – racially, socially, and culturally – in the exchange of care. This paper discusses this experience in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, ultimately endeavoring to stress the importance of being both seen and recognized.

Collaborating with Clinical Pastoral Educators to Teach a Research Literacy Curriculum

ABSTRACT The Department of Chaplaincy and Clinical Pastoral Education at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center offers a year-long Level II chaplain residency program to chaplains of all faiths. In 2017, the program was awarded a grant to develop a research literacy curriculum and invited a health sciences librarian and a social sciences librarian to teach residents about evidence-based practice and literature research methods. This interprofessional collaboration successfully engaged chaplains and librarians to learn and teach one another about their respective disciplines and how they can support one another in the pursuit of evidence-based spiritual care and research.

Intercultural Communication Concepts in Clinical Pastoral Education: The Intercultural Experience of Muslim Students.

This essay argues that inclusivity and multicultural-theological representation in CPE is its most valuable component. We will explore Muslim students' interaction, communication, and other processes, including conceptual analysis during their CPE training. Furthermore, gaps in the CPE curriculum will be addressed.