Mary Martha Thiel

Not being from that faith tradition, I was looking for something different from my own praxis of chaplaincy and clinical pastoral supervision. I could agree with most ofwhat was written. How is this Anabaptist-Mennonite spiritual care different from Roman Catholic spiritual care in an interfaith context? Second, in the chapter on interfaith spiritual care, I was looking for a case study or clinical vignette addressing the spiritual needs of a Muslim or Jewish person or Buddhist by a Christian chaplain. Third, in the chapter on the chaplain as pastoral theologian, I would have liked more focus on theological method. Finally, I would like to see some of the empirical research that is at the basis of the praxis of spiritual care and to hear the voices of nurses and occupational therapists or other health care professionals who also address spiritual care in the health care setting. These are small criticisms and are outweighed by the strengths of the volume. This book is a resource for ministry, and this is the surprise (fourth) goal that this book not only meets but exceeds. I plan to use this text in my Clinical Pastoral Education units and in my graduate course on Spirituality and Health.

Provision of spiritual/religious (S/R) care has been associated with improvements in patient care, patient-provider relationships, and resource utilization. Clinicians identify a lack of training in S/R care as the primary impediment. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of one-day, simulation-based workshops to prepare interprofessional clinicians to function as capable, confident, and ethical spiritual care generalists. Interprofessional practitioners (physicians, nurses, social workers, psychologists, child life specialists) in a quaternary care academic pediatric hospital participated in daylong Spiritual Generalist workshops utilizing professional actors to learn requisite spiritual generalist skills. Participants completed pre- and postworkshop questionnaires on the day of the workshop, and three-month follow-up self-report questionnaires that included 1-5-point Likert scale items focused on 15 spiritual generalist skills. One hundred fifteen interprofess...

LGBT elders are an increasing demographic in contemporary healthcare settings.  Often overlooked in discussions of cultural competency, LGBT elders can benefit from spiritual care offered by chaplains who have developed knowledge, skills, and comfort in this specialty.  This article presents components of a CPE curriculum designed to enhance chaplains’ competence in providing spiritual care to LGBT elders.

... DOI: 10.1080/15528030.2011.533353 Mary Martha Thiel a * pages 128-138. ... CPE is often the context in which those preparing for professional religious leadership actually live into their new identity of being the pastor, the minister, the rabbi, the chaplain. ...

Critical illness is a crisis for the total person, not just for the physical body. Patients and their loved ones often reflect on spiritual, religious, and existential questions when seriously ill. Surveys have demonstrated that most patients wish physicians would concern themselves with their patients' spiritual and religious needs, thus indicating that this part of their care has been neglected or avoided. With the well-documented desire of patients to have their caregivers include the patient's spiritual values in their health care, and the well-documented reality that caregivers are often hesitant to do so because of lack of training and comfort in this realm, clinical pastoral education for health care providers fills a significant gap in continuing education for caregivers. To report on the first 6 yrs of a unique training program in clinical pastoral education adapted for clinicians and its effect on the experience of the health care worker in the intensive care unit....

Our objective with this study was to identify the nature and the role of spirituality from the parents' perspective at the end of life in the PICU and to discern clinical implications. A qualitative study based on parental responses to open-ended questions on anonymous, self-administered questionnaires was conducted at 3 PICUs in Boston, Massachusetts. Fifty-six parents whose children had died in PICUs after the withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies participated. Overall, spiritual/religious themes were included in the responses of 73% (41 of 56) of parents to questions about what had been most helpful to them and what advice they would offer to others at the end of life. Four explicitly spiritual/religious themes emerged: prayer, faith, access to and care from clergy, and belief in the transcendent quality of the parent-child relationship that endures beyond death. Parents also identified several implicitly spiritual/religious themes, including insight and wisdom; reliance on...

Critical illness is a crisis for the total person, not just for the physical body. Patients and their loved ones often reflect on spiritual, religious, and existential questions when seriously ill. Surveys have demonstrated that most patients wish physicians would concern themselves with their patients' spiritual and religious needs, thus indicating that this part of their care has been neglected or avoided. With the well-documented desire of patients to have their caregivers include the patient's spiritual values in their health care, and the well-documented reality that caregivers are often hesitant to do so because of lack of training and comfort in this realm, clinical pastoral education for health care providers fills a significant gap in continuing education for caregivers. To report on the first 6 yrs of a unique training program in clinical pastoral education adapted for clinicians and its effect on the experience of the health care worker in the intensive care unit. We describe the didactic and reflective process whereby skills of relating to the ultimate concerns of patients and families are acquired and refined. Clinical pastoral education designed for clergy was adapted for the health care worker committed to developing skills in the diagnosis and management of spiritual distress. Clinician participants (approximately 10-12) meet weekly for 5 months (400 hrs of supervised clinical pastoral care training). The program is designed to incorporate essential elements of pastoral care training, namely experience, reflection, insight, action, and integration. This accredited program has been in continuous operation training clinicians for the past 6 yrs. Fifty-three clinicians have since graduated from the program. Graduates have incorporated clinical pastoral education training into clinical medical practice, research, and/or further training in clinical pastoral education. Outcomes reported by graduates include the following: Clinical practice became infused with new awareness, sensitivity, and language; graduates learned to relate more meaningfully to patients/families of patients and discover a richer relationship with them; spiritual distress was (newly) recognizable in patients, caregivers, and self. This unique clinical pastoral education program provides the clinician with knowledge, language, and understanding to explore and support spiritual and religious issues confronting critically ill patients and their families. We propose that incorporating spiritual care of the patient and family into clinical practice is an important step in addressing the goal of caring for the whole person.