Paying attention to people’s spiritual needs
I returned home yesterday from giving the keynote presentation at a conference on The Importance of Faith in Healthcare at the Heartbeat Training Centre at Southampton General Hospital. The conference, organized by the chaplaincy team, attracted about 80 delegates. Some were serving chaplains, others were staff from various departments in the hospital. I had been invited to speak as the former Chair of the Multi Faith Group for Healthcare Chaplaincy.
My main message was that we all have spiritual needs, whether we are formally religious or not. Physical, mental and spiritual health all intersect and we are whole when we are healthy in all three spheres:
This being so, it is surely as important to pay attention to a person’s spiritual qualities and needs when they are in hospital as to their physical needs. It is the role of chaplains or spiritual care givers to offer health service patients and staff such support as they need in meeting their spiritual needs.
How to do this? Rumi points the way:
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.
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This is remarkable. I recently read a book called Encountering the Sacred in Psychotherapy that addressed many of the same issues that you raised so eloquently. As a mental health professional working in the addictions field and soon to be Ph.D student these are things that I am very interested in especially when you take into account the challenges of religious and ethnic diversity of people who may be in health care settings. In the U.S. there is quite a lot of work being done about disparities in health care and outcomes linked to race, the new civil rights issues of this century I believe. One of the things I’m curious about as a scholar is clinicians attending to people’s spiritual needs (as distinct from doctrines or rituals) and whether or not this impacts the outcome of treatment, especially for ethnic minorities who tend to be more religious than the overall American population. I’ll definitely reference this post in my next round-up. Barney you did it again.
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Phillip, Stefan, thank you both for your very interesting comments. The cultures in the US and Sweden are clearly very different with respect to admitting spirituality into the public square and facilitating expressions of spirituality in healthcare settings.
I believe that spiritual healthcare should not be give only by religious professionals (priests, ministers, etc). Medical and nursing staff can also play an important role in attending to patients’ spiritual (but not necessarily their religious) needs.
Stefan, I hope you find the necessary texts for your solace book - a great idea.
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