Workings of the human spirit in palliative care situations: a consensus model from the Chaplaincy Research Consortium


Author: Linda Emanuel 15*, George Handzo 1, George Grant 2, Kevin Massey 3, Angelika Zollfrank 4, Diana Wilke 6, Richard Powell 17, Walter Smith 1 and Kenneth Pargament 8

Affiliation: * Corresponding author:	Linda Emanuel l-emanuel@northwestern.edu  Author Affiliations 1 Research and Education, HealthCare Chaplaincy Network, 65 Broadway, 12th Floor, New York, 10006-2503, NY, USA  2 Spiritual Health, Emory Healthcare, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA  3 Mission and Spiritual Care, Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, USA  4 Clinical Pastoral Education, Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, CT, USA  5 Geriatric Medicine and Buehler Center on Aging, Health & Society, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA  6 Center of Excellence for End-of-Life Transition Research, Department of Biobehavioral Health Science, College of Nursing, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois, USA  7 Global Health Researcher, Nairobi, Kenya  8 Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, 43403, USA
Conference/Journal: BMC Palliative Care
Date published: 2015
Other:
 Volume ID: 14   ,  Pages: 29   ,  Word Count: 357  
    Background

Chaplaincy is a relatively new discipline in medicine that provides for care of the human spirit in healthcare contexts for people of all worldviews. Studies indicate wide appreciation for its importance, yet empirical research is limited. Our purpose is to create a model of human spiritual processes and needs in palliative care situations so that researchers can locate their hypotheses in a common model which will evolve with relevant findings.



Methods

The Model Building Subgroup worked with the Chaplaincy Research Consortium as part of a larger Templeton Foundation funded project to enhance research in the area. It met with members for an hour on three successive occasions over three years and exchanged drafts for open comment between meetings. All members of the Subgroup agreed on the final draft.



Results

The model uses modestly adapted existing definitions and models. It describes the human experience of spirituality during serious illness in three renditions: visual, mathematical, and verbal so that researchers can use whichever is applicable. The visual rendition has four domains: spiritual, psychological, physical and social with process arrows and permeable boundaries between all areas. The mathematical rendition has the same four factors and is rendered as an integral equation, corresponding to an integrative function postulated for the human spirit. In both renditions, the model is notable in its allowance for direct spiritual experience and a domain or factor in its own right, not only experience that is created through the others. The model does not describe anything beyond the human experience. The verbal rendition builds on existing work to describe the processes of the human spirit, relating it to the four domains or factors.



Conclusions

A consensus model of the human spirit to generate hypotheses and evolve based on data has been delineated. Implications of the model for how the human spirit functions and how the chaplain can care for the patient or family caregiver’s spiritual coping and well-being are discussed. The next step is to generate researchable hypotheses, results of research from which will give insight into the human spirit and guidance to chaplains caring for it.



Keywords: Human spirituality; Model; Palliative care; Research; Chaplaincy