The Evidence Based Fundamentals of Health Care Chaplaincy

A complied resource of evidence-based research validating and providing guidance for integrating spiritual care into health care settings and other whole person care situations and circumstances.

A core focus of HealthCare Chaplaincy Network (HCCN) has always been the integration of spiritual care into health care in the United States through evidence-based clinical practice, education, advocacy, and more. Key to our efforts has been the encouragement and publication of research. At HCCN's first ever Caring for the Human Spirit ® Conference in 2014, several groundbreaking studies were presented, funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. At the time, this was the first large-scale attempt at forming an evidence base for spiritual care effectiveness in health care. Our hope was that this conference would act as the launch pad for a rigorous new field of long-overdue research. Since then, HCCN and its affiliates the Spiritual Care Association (SCA) and Capstone University, have become the major innovators and change agents in the field of modern professional chaplaincy.

Over a five-year period between 2016 and 2021, SCA invested in the research and publication of nine foundational white papers. These documents explore aspects of the importance of spiritual care in various health care settings, including hospital chaplaincy, hospice and palliative care chaplaincy, the emerging field of telechaplaincy, the roles of the physician, the nurse, and the social worker in spiritual care, and more. These foundational papers have now been collected in a single volume for ease of publication and access. Our hope is that all chaplains, whether new or experienced in the profession, will benefit from this work, and that some may become inspired to participate in further research to push the field of professional chaplaincy in new directions