Healthcare Chaplains Research Articles

Professional satisfaction among U.S. healthcare chaplains.

This article reports the results of a questionnaire sent to 1,099 chaplains with board certification from the Association of Professional Chaplains regarding determinants of professional satisfaction among U.S. healthcare chaplains.

Spiritual Care: Bridging the Disciplines in Congregational Health Ministries

ABSTRACT These materials describe the professional, legal, relational, and theological roles of parish nurses, health care chaplains, and community clergy. It illustrates these roles by discussing two case studies of how these professionals can work together. It then provides examples of role violations for each profession and recommends some simple rules that will enable them to work together productively.

Resources for Individual and Team Growth

ABSTRACT A selected annotated bibliography for parish nurses, health care chaplains, and community clergy is presented. The last section provides references to materials that speak to specific opportunities for ministry that interest these professionals, including aging, bereavement, the sick, counseling for emotional support, and domestic violence.

Connections, Collisions, and Complimentarity: The Dynamic of Health Care Chaplain, Parish Nurse and Parish Clergy Collaboration

ABSTRACT Parish nurses, health care chaplains, and community clergy can collaborate to create communities of wholeness. As these professionals extend their care and mission into the community, chaplains, parish nurses, and community clergy have opportunities for collaboration. These collaborative efforts come as a result of personal connections that can lead to collisions in priorities and philosophies but can also be productive complimentarity as they learn to work together for a common mission. Through connection this potential for collision or complimentarity, the community itself can participate with health professionals and clergy to help people be better, feel better, and carry suffering better.

An Islamic understanding of health care: what can it teach us?

Supporting the case for employment and use of non-Christian health care chaplains in the National Health Service (NHS), the Runnymede Trust (1997) states: ‘The inclusiveness or otherwise of a society is seen particularly clearly in the provision which it makes for its members when they fall ill, and perhaps especially when they spend extended time in hospital. At this point of stress and distress in the lives of individuals and their families, are people helped to “maintain their own culture, traditions, language and values”? The Patient’s Charter of 1991 requires that health care providers should ensure “respect for privacy, dignity and religious and cultural beliefs”. . One way of helping to ensure that such respect is shown is through the appointment of hospital Chaplains.’ Although the Patient’s Charter (Department of Health 1991) and the subsequent NHS Management Executive document HSG (92)2 (Department of Health 1992) required provision for the religious needs of all patients, in reality, apart from a few exceptions, it led to the appointment of more Church of England Chaplains (Beckford and Gilliat, 1996). Recognizing this problem, Reid and Clarke (1998) indicated NHS Executive willingness to redraw these documents ‘provided it comes in the form of a common agreed approach to all faith communities, on the status of chaplaincy and spiritual care in the NHS’.

Informing the debate: chaplaincy and spiritual care in Scotland

This article is based on research into how healthcare chaplains understand and practice spiritual care in Scotland. Scotland, with its own department of health and national church, is distinct within the United Kingdom. While a great deal has been written regarding spiritual care in the 1990s little has been contributed by chaplains, who seem unaware of the debate. The research demonstrates that Scottish chaplains are less religious in understanding and practice than might generally be expected, and also how they naturally embrace palliative care, with its approach to the individual and his/her family/carers. The findings show that chaplains are experienced in providing spiritual care in its widest sense. However, chaplains need to take the initiative to engage in the spiritual care debate, and increases their input in education and training. Those directing the spiritual care debate need not be afraid of being led down a religious road by consulting chaplains.

Book Review: Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer: An Exchange between Larry Dossey, M.D. and Health Care Chaplains

Book Review: Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer: An Exchange between Larry Dossey, M.D. and Health Care Chaplains

A Spiritual Pathway for Prior Grief

Twelve spiritual pathways for problems commonly encountered by health care chaplains have been developed at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash.1 One of these, the spiritual pathway for prior grief is an approach to pastoral care for patients who have unresolved grief from a loss that precedes and may be unrelated to their present treatment. The author describes indicators of the elements of spiritual care for prior grief as well as the implications of this pathway for the training of chaplains. Effective spiritual care for patients with prior grief may promote integration of their loss and possibly reduce unnecessary utilization of health care resources.

An Emerging Paradigm in Professional Chaplaincy

Using the work of Thomas Kuhn, the author argues that the changes health care chaplains are experiencing represent a paradigm shift in health care chaplaincy. Characteristics of the new paradigm, n...

A hospital ethics committee at war: the hospital ship Mercy experience during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm.

During Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) was one of two American hospital ships deployed to the Persian Gulf. She arrived in the Gulf on 15 September 1990, following a 12,000-mile transit from her homeport of Oakland, California, and remained on station until 18 March 1991, when she passed through the Straits of Hormuz on her return voyage home. During the height of her deployment, Mercy was staffed with nearly 1,200 men and women, including physicians, nurses, dentists, representatives of affiliated health-care disciplines (including physical therapy, pharmacy, clinical psychology, social work, dietetics, and environmental health), hospital corpsmen, dental technicians, healthcare administrators, chaplains, and various nonmedical support personnel. The staff included a mix of active duty military providers and recalled reservists.

How Can I Help?

Many health care chaplains are unsure about how to provide pastoral care to hospitalized developmentally disabled persons. This article offers some practical approaches. These methods are based upon (1) an increased awareness regarding some of the common life experiences of developmentally disabled persons; and (2) acknowledging and witnessing to the impact of the historical devaluation of developmentally disabled persons, resultant negative role expectancies, and the application of unconscious assumptions which are emotionally and spiritually draining to the patient. Presented here is a model of pastoral care which is based upon the recognition, respect, affirmation, and inclusion of develpmentally disabled persons and of their capacities to derive spiritual meaning and comfort from such efforts.