精神和保健

从莎拉·托茨开始, M3, heard a lecture on the importance of spiritual care in the hospital setting, she was interested in learning more and inspired to participate.

The presentation took place in an ethics course during her first year of medical school. 演讲者，也是她未来的导师，是梵. 凯文·希, who currently manages a group of eight chaplains at Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital in Royal Oak.

When it came time to choose a topic for her four-year Embark longitudinal research requirement, 托茨很清楚会发生什么. (欲了解更多关于登船的信息， 点击这里.)

The result of her time and effort is an extensive study recently published in the Journal of Religion and Health, called “Relationships Between the Number of Chaplain Visits and Patient Characteristics: A Retrospective Review of a Large Suburban Midwest Hospital, 美国.”

“If we don’t ask patients what role 他们的信仰 has in their life, 那我们就错过了了解他们的机会,Toates补充道。.

“We need to be comfortable asking patients about their spirituality and their religion.”

“一个更好的过程”

Hickey is an instructor at OUWB, where he teaches Medical Humanities & 临床生物伦理学(MHCB)研讨会.

He began an internship and residency at Corewell Health’s Royal Oak campus l in 2014, 并于2016年成为一名员工.

立即, Hickey identified a need to better track how spiritual care is delivered in health care settings, citing the biopsychosocial-spiritual model of wellness and medicine that essentially includes spiritual health as part of an individual’s overall health.

“Our documentation model had basically two options: ‘chaplain visited with the patient and chaplain prayed with the patient,’”希基说. “There was a real need for a better process that allowed us to provide more robust information for the physicians and nurses.”

Piloting and designing the new process was a six-year-long project.

Additional fields were added to the electronic medical record, allowing chaplains to log details of their patient visits directly into the digital database. 大约有100个不同的数据点.

“It was a massive amount of statistical information and a goldmine of opportunity,” he says.

Toates gave an example of why having this data accessible is so vital for patient care.

“在我的临床轮转期间, I am often assigned to see a patient whom I’ve never met and know nothing about,托茨说。. “The first thing that I do is to review their medical record. 从历史上看, there’s good documentation from physical and occupational therapists, 社会工作者, 营养师和其他支持人员.”

在执行本程序之前, detailed information on the patient’s spiritual history — and what chaplains had discussed with or provided to chaplains — didn’t exist.

“精神关怀支持”

托茨领导的这项研究评估了2,向1 .提供了373个牧师探访记录,315 patients over a three-month period from March to May 2021.

The study found that about “70% of patients received one chaplain visit. 然而, data revealed that when patients were admitted emergently, or received visits for reasons related to self-harm or suicidality, the frequency of chaplain visits significantly increased.”

This suggests a more critical need for spiritual care services for patients with emergency or mental health conditions. It also highlights the need for “further training and resources for chaplains to increase clinical competencies in providing specialized spiritual care support to specific patient populations.”

“Our goal is to share this information…to inspire even more research about how spiritual care is delivered in a health care context, 说希.

耐心和同理心

托茨说，她很感激这次经历, has a deeper understanding of the role that chaplains play on the health care team, and a greater appreciation for the fact that “patients think a lot about ...他们的信仰.”

它在临床环境中也被证明是有用的.

“I was working in the ER when a woman arrived with her husband, who was seriously ill,” she says. 他的妻子手里拿着念珠. She was standing at the head of the bed and praying while the team of medical professionals cared for her husband.”

Toates asked her about her faith, and if she would be interested in connecting with a chaplain.

她表示愿意, so I paged one of the chaplains on call and they spoke with her,托茨说。.

Toates, who has a special interest in hospice and palliative care, says it’s just one example of why it’s important to realize that “often there’s patient cues that we, 作为医院工作人员, 要能认出来吗.”