Publications by authors named "Shelley E Varner Perez"
In 2022, a JAMA systematic review of 342 high quality studies called for spiritual care to be a routine part of care for patients with serious illness. The review's multidisciplinary panel made several recommendations for addressing patients' and families' spiritual concerns. Despite these evidence-based recommendations, there are no clinical guidelines that inform when and how such spiritual care should be provided.
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- * It investigates the feasibility and acceptability of the Spiritual Care Assessment and Intervention framework (SCAI-Peds), specifically adapted for home-based chaplaincy support for these caregivers.
- * The findings indicate that SCAI-Peds was well-received by both caregivers and chaplains, suggesting the potential for home-based interventions to foster reflection and emotional support, prompting the need for further research beyond this initial pilot.
Objective: To pilot test and assess the feasibility and acceptability of chaplain-led decision coaching alongside the GOALS (Getting Optimal Alignment around Life Support) decision support tool to enhance decision-making in threatened periviable delivery.
Methods: Pregnant people admitted for threatened periviable delivery and their 'important other' (IO) were enrolled. Decisional conflict, acceptability, and knowledge were measured before and after the intervention.
Background: In-hospital resuscitation events have complex and enduring effects on clinicians, with implications for job satisfaction, performance, and burnout. Ethically ambiguous cases are associated with increased moral distress. We aim to quantitatively describe the multidisciplinary resuscitation experience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: Critical illness of a family member is associated with high emotional and spiritual distress and difficult medical decisions.
Objectives: To determine if a semistructured spiritual care intervention improves the well-being of family surrogate decision makers in intensive care (ICU) settings.
Methods: This study is a randomized, allocation-concealed, parallel group, usual care-controlled, single-blind trial of patient/surrogate dyads in five ICUs in one Midwest, academic medical center.
Background: Evidence and clinical guidelines call care team members to address the spiritual well-being of pediatric patients, especially adolescents and young adults (AYA), with cancer and blood disorders. However, the lack of relevant training in generalist spiritual care has been a key barrier. Therefore, we aimed to improve clinicians' capabilities by utilizing the Interprofessional Spiritual Care Education Curriculum (ISPEC) to close this gap in pediatric hematology-oncology.
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- Spiritual suffering is an important part of caring for patients who are very sick, so spiritual care needs to be a key part of palliative care.
- Many doctors and caregivers don't get enough training on how to help people with their spiritual needs.
- The article gives detailed information to help caregivers improve their skills and work together to make sure patients get support that matches their beliefs.
Background: Although religion and spirituality are important to adults with cancer and their family caregivers, few studies have tested spiritual care interventions in the outpatient setting.
Aim: To determine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects of chaplain-delivered, semi-structured spiritual care to adult outpatients with advanced cancer and their caregivers.
Design: In this pre/post pilot intervention study, board-certified chaplains utilized the Spiritual Care Assessment and Intervention (SCAI) framework during 4 individual sessions.
"I Don't Do Religion": Using Nature Photographs to Engage Patients in Spiritual Reflection.
J Pain Symptom Manage
November 2022
Article Synopsis
- More patients in the U.S. aren't religious, so chaplains need new ways to talk about spiritual and deep life questions.
- A chaplain in the story used photos of landscapes as a special tool to help patients open up about their feelings and beliefs.
- This kind of conversation can help doctors understand what the patient wants in their treatment and how to make their care more personal and better overall.