Defense Date

3-21-2024

Graduation Date

Spring 5-10-2024

Availability

One-year Embargo

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

Health Care Ethics

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Gerard Magill

Committee Member

Joris Gielen

Committee Member

Peter Ikechukwu Osuji

Keywords

bioethics, health care ethics, healthcare ethics, clinical chaplain, spiritual, spirituality, chaplaincy, religion, religious

Abstract

This dissertation, “Transforming Chaplain Ethics: The Clinical Ethics of Spiritual Care in a Pluralistic Healthcare Environment in the United States,” aims to examine the clinical ethics of religious and spiritual care provided by clinical chaplains for patients and families receiving treatment in a pluralistic healthcare context in the United States.

Clinical chaplains are more than clergypersons and they are more than clinicians; they are a highly specialized marriage of both worlds. There is a fundamental asymmetry between functioning as a leader in a local religious community or faith tradition and providing clinical spiritual care in a pluralistic healthcare environment. This is in fact a highly specialized field requiring knowledge, skills, and abilities well beyond that of the local religious ministry professional, which itself requires substantial general and specialized knowledge, skills, and abilities. Healthcare ethics is a fundamental aspect of this specialized body of knowledge and field of practice. Clinical chaplains should follow healthcare ethics practices like all other clinicians, fully respecting person’s rights and focusing their interventions upon the patient’s needs. The distinction between the two roles must be clearly defined and maintained for legal, ethical, and practical reasons. This work sets out to begin to establish a framework for an ethical practical theology for clinical spiritual care. A practical theology is the “how” or the “so what” of an organized system of belief, and within these brief pages this author has begun to create such a “so what” based upon the belief that all persons are worthy of equal dignity and respect, free to believe or disbelieve according to their own conscience, and that there is immense clinical value in assessing and clinically intervening in accordance with the patient’s presenting needs. Spiritual care is essential for ethical holistic care, and the designated specialist provider, the clinical chaplain, must be uniquely prepared and qualified for this vital work. This dissertation concludes with the seminal approach to analyzing the ethics of providing sacred spaces, worship experience opportunities, and rituals for healthcare customers. This analysis must continue beyond this initial work. This direction is the most pressing as clinical chaplaincy evolves and discovers its clinical identity apart from the original institutional contexts in which both healthcare and chaplaincy were born.

Language

English

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