The aim of this study was to document the longitudinal experiences of chaplains who served during both the early AIDS (1981-1995) and early COVID-19 (2020-2021) pandemics. A total of 11 hospital chaplains were interviewed across the USA and the United Kingdom. Interviews were analyzed using a Grounded theory approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Spirituality is an important component of social and cultural identity that influences health-related beliefs, decision-making, and coping behaviors. Despite the importance of addressing spirituality in healthcare, research about its impact is limited, especially in the primary care setting.
Objective: This study aimed to explore patients' and chaplains' experiences of receiving or providing spiritual care in the primary care setting.
The Cerulean Bowl is a metaphor for self-care and boundary setting in spiritual care encounters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To assess the effectiveness of a chaplain patient navigator in improving outcomes and reducing costs in the ICU setting.
Design: A randomized controlled trial at a large, urban, academic community hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
Setting/patients: All patients admitted to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center Cardiac and Medical ICUs between March 2015 and December 2015.
This set of three case studies portrays a unique intervention undertaken at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a goal to reduce the impact of absentee visitors during patient care on physicians, nurses, and the patient's loved ones. The intervention, known by the acronym TIMS, "This is My Story", involves a chaplain-initiated telephone call to a loved one, someone who has been identified by the patient as part of their care discussions, of hospitalized patients who have difficulty with communicating to the medical team. The call is recorded then edited for conciseness, and attached to the electronic health record for the entire medical care team to hear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the last 12-months during the pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have issued public health instructions with the hope of mitigating the spread of the virus. Through existing relationships established by an academic hospital, we established weekly community conference calls to disseminate such critical information on the pandemic and allow community leaders to discuss struggles and successes. From these calls, we were able to collaborate in a more intimate manner with faith-based organizations, whereby we emphasized and planned the role they could undertake during the pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring the pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2, public health instructions were issued with the hope of curbing the virus' spread. In an effort to assure accordance with these instructions, equitable strategies for at-risk and vulnerable populations and communities are warranted. One such strategy was our community conference calls, implemented to disseminate information on the pandemic and allow community leaders to discuss struggles and successes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHospital chaplains often visit critically ill patients, but neurosciences critical care unit (NCCU) staff beliefs surrounding chaplains have not been characterized. In this study, we used Qualtrics to survey 70 NCCU healthcare workers about their attitudes toward chaplains in the NCCU. Chaplains were seen positively by staff but were less likely to be viewed as part of the care team by staff with more than five years of NCCU experience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEffective communication between intensive care unit (ICU) staff, and patients and their families, can help increase understanding, trust, and goals-of-care decisions. Many strategies focus on enhancing communication by increasing family meetings or adding patient navigators. In our ICU, we implemented both strategies, uniquely appointing a chaplain for the patient navigator role.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpiritual care is associated with improved health outcomes and higher patient satisfaction. However, chaplains often cover many hospital units and thus may not be able to serve all patients. Involving student chaplains in patient spiritual care may allow for more patients to experience the support of spiritual care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPromoting wellness and providing reliable health information in the community present serious challenges. Lay health educators, also known as community health workers, may offer a cost-effective solution to such challenges. This is a retrospective observational study of graduates from the Lay Health Educator Program (LHEP) at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center from 2013 to 2014.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImproved collaboration between physicians and chaplains has the potential to improve patient experiences. To better understand the benefits and challenges of learning together, the authors conducted several focus groups with participants in an interprofessional curriculum that partnered internal medicine residents with chaplain interns in the clinical setting. The authors derived four major qualitative themes from the transcripts: (1) physician learners became aware of effective communication skills for addressing spirituality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Ethical decision-making regarding life-sustaining therapies (LST) for high-risk neonates can be challenging for both neonatologists and parents. Parents depend on neonatologists to interpret complex information, identify critical opportunities for decision-making, and present options for care. How neonatologists' belief systems affect care delivery for critically ill newborns is unexplored.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Emerg Ment Health
April 2008
Traditionally faith communities have served important roles in helping survivors cope in the aftermath of public health disasters. However, the provision of optimally effective crisis intervention services for persons experiencing acute or prolonged emotional trauma following such incidents requires specialized knowledge, skills, and abilities. Supported by a federally-funded grant, several academic health centers and faith-based organizations collaborated to develop a training program in Psychological First Aid (PFA) and disaster ministry for members of the clergy serving urban minorities and Latino immigrants in Baltimore, Maryland.
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