Spirituality and Medicine

Health Progress, Mar/Apr 2004 by Poehlman, Keith

Hospital patients often count on chaplains for the comfort and inspiration they provide. But at one Midwestern medical center chaplains are working to extend the healing power of spirituality beyond the bedside-into doctors' offices, summer camps for grieving children, even the operating room.

"There is a revolution in progress in the practice of Western medicine," says Randol Batson, a Catholic deacon who is manager of the Spiritual Care Department at Genesis Medical Center, a community hospital in Davenport, IA. "Spirituality is being reintroduced into health care consciousness and the practice of medicine."

It used to be that the physician and spiritual leader was often "one and the same" person, Batson notes. Then that changed, at least in the Western world. "Following the birth of the scientific age, some 500 years ago, spiritual practice and science diverged, taking separate but parallel pathways," Batson says. "While there have always been scientists of high spiritual consciousness, the vast body of scientific knowledge has been based upon empirical evidence."

Then, about 25 years ago, scientists began to clinically examine the effect spirituality had on patients' physical and mental well-being. "A number of significant studies clearly show that spirituality is an important component of health and wellness, and that people who are spiritually healthy are more likely to be physically and mentally healthy," says Batson, a former student at the Center for Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University, St. Louis.

In 1995 Batson joined hundreds of faith and health care professionals at a Harvard Medical School conference entitled "Spirituality and Healing in Medicine." "Out of that conference came a strong initiative to motivate physicians to integrate spiritual practices into their health care delivery," he says. "For instance, physicians who are comfortable with shared prayer are now encouraged to pray with those patients who wish that form of care."

In 1993, just two years before the Harvard meeting, only three of the 123 colleges of medicine in the United States actually offered courses on the importance spirituality plays in health care. But by 1999, 50 of those institutions were offering spirituality classes.*

When Batson joined Genesis in 1998, he found that his new employer was not only willing but eager to move beyond the traditional model of pastoral care into a more comprehensive continuum of spiritual care. "Part of it is the environment at Genesis," Batson says. "It's the consciousness of our highly creative spiritual care team supported by an administration that believes in us and values the work we do."

RICK'S HOUSE OF HOPE

In 1996 the late Rev. Rick Johnson, Batson's predecessor at Genesis, founded Prairie and River Spiritual Resources to bring spiritual care to those members of the community who, as he said, "have fallen through the cracks." One of its most notable programs, Rick's House of Hope, a grief and trauma recovery center, was founded in 1999 in Rev. Johnson's honor.

The founders of Rick's House of Hope intended it to provide support group therapy and oneon-one counseling to help children and adolescents who are grieving the death of significant family members. Today it also assists children in coping with divorce and other major life transitions. Last summer the center hosted a week-long "grief camp," offering children another way to deal with the death of a loved one. In 2002 the National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children, based in Grosse Pointe Woods, MI, named Rick's House of Hope its "program of the year."

PRAYER IN THE OR

"Out of the first Harvard conference, I developed a great interest in having chaplains in the operating room (OR) to pray throughout the surgery," says Batson. At Genesis he met someone who shared that vision: Thomas Mabee, MD, a cardiothoracic surgeon. "? want to do this in my operating room,'" Batson recalls Dr. Mabee saying. "'Will you see if you can get administrative approval?'"

In February 2000, Dr. Mabee performed his first operation with a chaplain, Batson, seated in the operating room. Today, on-location prayer in the OR is practiced by most chaplains and chaplain interns at Genesis.

In the program, patients who request prayer support are contacted by a chaplain or intern for an assessment prior to surgery. Then, on the surgery date, the chaplain comes to be with the patient during the preopcrational phase and remains until the postoperative phase. During the surgery, the chaplain sits on a stool at the end of the surgical suite, providing prayer support for both the patient and the entire operating team. Depending upon the patient's stated faith preference, the chaplain's care may include silent prayer, meditation, visualization, silent scripture, intentional thought, and recitation of the Rosary or another mantra.

Referrals to the program come from various members of the interdisciplinary care team: any physician, nurse, or medical social worker who happens to think the patient might value such support. The ultimate choice, however, belongs to the patient.