The Role of the Healthcare Chaplain: A Literature Review

Abstract

Healthcare chaplains operate in many healthcare sites internationally and yet their contribution is not always clearly understood by medical and healthcare staff. This review aims to explore the chaplains' role in healthcare, with a view to informing best practice in future healthcare chaplaincy. Overall the extent of the provision and staffing of chaplaincy service internationally is unclear. From this review, several key spiritual and pastoral roles in healthcare emerge including a potential contribution to ethical decision making at the end of life. Healthcare chaplains are key personnel, already employed in many healthcare organizations, who are in a pivotal position to contribute to future developments of faith-based care, faith-sensitive pastoral, and spiritual care provision. They also have a new and evolving role in ethical support of patient, families and healthcare teams.

End of life in acute hospital setting—A systematic review of families' experience of spiritual care

“…Many found religious ritual consoling and were often initially unaware of how important spirituality and ritual eventually become to them as end of life drew near. Indeed many families will gain solace from religious and cultural rituals, even though they may not have a practising faith (Timmins et al, 2017).…”

“…However, there is widespread confusion over the growing numbers of people expressing the view that they have no religion, with hospital staff uncertain about how to manage spirituality at the end of life in this context. Indeed, some groups claim these nonbelievers subscribe to secular beliefs (Timmins et al, 2017). However, scholars and healthcare practitioners are increasingly aware that this categorisation is not as clear-cut as it may seem (Creel & Tillman, 2008).…”

Religious/Spiritual Referrals in Hospice and Palliative Care

“…Participants (n = 9) also shared views that indicate the tendency to avoid engaging in conversations and support related to religious/spiritual needs or other emotional or existential demands that are often associated with religion and chaplaincy (Lopez 2018;Timmins et al 2018).…”

Conditions for Religious Pluralism in Swedish Hospital Chaplaincy: A Research Note

“…Over recent decades, research interest in hospital chaplaincy has increased (Harding, Flannelly, Galek, & Tannenbaum, 2008;Timmis et al, 2017;Weaver, Flannelly, & Liu, 2008). In the wider setting of religious studies, one reason for the growing interest is that hospital chaplaincy offers a core research site for understanding religious pluralism (Bender, Cadge, Levitt, & Smilde, 2013).…”

“…Research on health care chaplaincy in Sweden is also scarce, and since very little research from this site is published in English, we do not know how the Swedish case could contribute to key research themes in international chaplaincy research. For example, the Swedish case could most likely contribute to ongoing international discussions of how chaplains are required to explain and demonstrate the worth of chaplaincy to hospital administration (Timmis et al, 2017), as well as to developments toward generic spiritual care providers on behalf of faith specific care givers (Pesut, Reimer-Kirkham, Sawatzky, Woodland, & Peverall, 2012). In a current state inquiry into state support for faith communities in this country, chaplaincy in hospitals has been justified by arguing that chaplains provide knowledge about religious differences to health care personnel and patients' relatives and friends (The Swedish Ministry of Culture, 2018, p. 131).…”