“Testing the Efficacy of Chaplaincy Care,” in the current issue of the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy, is the latest and most comprehensive narrative on the importance of research in professional chaplaincy.Its authors are HealthCare Chaplaincy’s Katherine R. B. Jankowski, George F. Handzo and Kevin J. Flannelly. You can download and read the article here.
To highlight the key points:
Research to date supports the importance of spiritual and religious needs of patients and their families, and that patients, family of patients, and hospital staff recognize the need for chaplaincy and are satisfied with chaplaincy care.
But this research is inconclusive on what chaplains do that is unique to chaplaincy practice, how what they do relates directly to patient health outcomes, and which practices are best for which kinds of patients in what patient settings.
More research is needed to describe the unique contributions of chaplains to spiritual care and identify best chaplaincy practices to optimize patient and family health outcomes.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the John Templeton Foundation which funded this work. Last month HealthCare Chaplaincy announced Calls for Proposals for the major research initiative “Growing the Field of Chaplaincy Research in Palliative Care,” also funded by the John Templeton Foundation. This will award six to ten grants of up to $250,000 each to build capacity in the field of chaplaincy research in palliative care by creating an interdisciplinary network of experienced researchers and board-certified chaplains, promoting career development of participants, and supporting field-advancing research projects to better understand chaplaincy care in palliative care. For more information, click here.
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