MGH program teaches caregivers to tend to the spiritual need of patients

June 11, 2007|Judy Foreman

The lovely chapel at Massachusetts General Hospital was crammed with flowers and well-wishers one recent afternoon, as seven newly certified spiritual caregivers -- five nurses, a social worker, and a medical student -- took to the microphone.

The graduates of the five-month program spoke of praying with a homeless, schizophrenic man as his foot infection was treated and his toenails clipped. They spoke of helping a man with veins ruined by intravenous drug use pray to his Higher Power to ease the pain as an IV needle was inserted. They spoke of the need to make medical care more "sacred" -- to comfort by being with, not just doing to, a patient.

Or, as their mentor, Mass. General chaplain the Rev. Angelika Zollfrank put it: Of learning to "hold patients in deeper and more meaningful ways."

Studies have repeatedly shown that patients in hospitals have religious or spiritual needs, and that very often those needs go unmet.

Earlier this year, for example, Dr. Tracy A. Balboni and colleagues at the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program and elsewhere found that 72 percent of advanced cancer patients felt their spiritual needs were going unaddressed by the medical system.

Now, places such as the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center at Mass. General are increasingly recognizing those needs. The idea is "not to impose God or a Higher Power on a nonbeliever," said Kathleen Gallivan , director of the chaplaincy department at Brigham and Women's Hospital. But to ask "a patient whether religion or spirituality is a resource for them."

"Illness is always a crisis in meaning," Gallivan said. People wonder, "Why is this happening to me? What does it mean for my future? For my family? For my job?"

Gallivan said she's eager to do more to meet patients' spiritual needs at the Brigham.

At Mass. General, the Clinical Pastoral Education program trains people who are already healthcare providers to attend better to their patients' spiritual needs.

The Joint Commission, formerly the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, has for years "required hospitals to accommodate the rights to pastoral and other spiritual services for patients," said Pat Adamski , director of the standards interpretation group at the commission.

There are also efforts in academia, like those sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit group, to study how spiritual questions might be better addressed in the medical system.

Ten years ago, a pivotal study found that 88 percent of patients experienced "religious needs" while hospitalized, George Fitchett , the study leader and director of research in the Department of Religion, Health, and Human Values at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said in an e-mail.