Healthcare Chaplains Responding to Change

Embracing Outcomes or Reaffirming Relationships?

Authors

  • Steve Nolan Princess Alice Hospice

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/hscc.v3i2.27068

Keywords:

Presence, Outcome Oriented Chaplaincy (OOC), relationship, nursing, managerialism, research

Abstract

The economic constraints reshaping Western healthcare are profoundly changing the reality in which healthcare chaplaincy is practiced. The recent ‘call to action’ issued by an international group of leading chaplains acknowledges the complexity of the emerging context and, on the grounds that current healthcare cost are unsustainable and the requirement to put patient needs at the centre of healthcare, they urge chaplains to adopt the outcomes approach that is the ‘new currency’ of healthcare in industrialized countries, and develop outcomes that are ‘replicable and predictable’. To the extent that the outcomes approach is aimed at improving spiritual care, the call to action is to be welcomed. However, this paper argues that adapting to the new reality ‘replicable and predictable outcomes’ will likely impact chaplaincy values as much as professional practice. The paper argues that this will be at the cost of distorting the values and beliefs that chaplains have held to be important to spiritual care.

Author Biography

  • Steve Nolan, Princess Alice Hospice

    Revd Dr Steve Nolan has been chaplain at Princess Alice Hospice, Esher, since 2004. With research and professional interests in chaplains' case studies, non-religious spiritual care, and spiritual care and psychotherapy (psychospiritual care), he has published peer reviewed articles on the theory and practice of spiritual care. His doctoral research involved the interdisciplinary use of psychoanalytic film theory to examine the construction of religious identity (published as Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion, Continuum, 2009). He has published research looking at how palliative care chaplains work with people who are dying (Spiritual Care at the End of Life: The Chaplain as a ‘Hopeful Presence’, Jessica Kingsley, 2012), and with Prof Margaret Holloway, a wordbook on spirituality (A to Z of Spirituality (Palgrave 2013). His recent editorial collaboration with Prof George Fitchett is a collection of chaplains' case studies (Spiritual Care in Practice, Jessica Kingsley, 2015). He is a BACP accredited psychotherapist; he has tutored on the MTh in Chaplaincy Studies in the Cardiff Centre for Chaplaincy Studies, and been a member of the European Association for Palliative Care Taskforce on Spiritual Care.

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Published

2015-10-16

How to Cite

Nolan, S. (2015). Healthcare Chaplains Responding to Change: Embracing Outcomes or Reaffirming Relationships?. Health and Social Care Chaplaincy, 3(2), 93-109. https://doi.org/10.1558/hscc.v3i2.27068