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The 2005 GWish Spirituality and Medicine Curricular
and Residency Training Program Awards
Funded by the John Templeton Foundation
To view summary for each program Award, click on the name of the institution:
Medical Schools
East Carolina University
Course Director: David W. Musick, PhD
Health Sciences Center
Course Director: Jacqueline J. Glover, PhD
School of Medicine
Course Directors: M. Kay Sandor, PhD, RN, LPC, AHN; Victor S. Sierpina, MD; Harold Vanderpool, PhD, ThM
School of Medicine
Course Director: Robert Macauley, MD
Primary Care Residency Training Programs
Department of Family, Community and Preventive Medicine
Course Director: Margaret K. Stockwell, MD
Department of Medicine
Course Director: Julia Andrieni, MD
Departments of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases
Course Director: Mary Ellen Bozynski, MD, MS
Department of Family and Community Medicine
Course Director: Denise McKee, MD
Psychiatry Residency Training Programs
Department of Religion, Health and Human Values
Course Director: Patricia Murphy, PhD
Vancouver General Hospital
Course Directors: Soma Ganesan, MD FRCP; Andrea Grabovac, MD FRCP
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Course Director: Joan M.T. Collison, MD
Department of Neuropsychiatry
Course Director: Craig Stuck, MD
Medical Schools
Brody School of Medicine
East Carolina University
Course Director: David W. Musick, PhD
A New Spirituality and Medicine Curriculum
Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, N.C., is a relatively young medical school with a strong primary care orientation. The school has a three-fold mission that serves as a framework for our educational efforts: 1) to increase the supply of primary care physicians to serve the state, with emphasis on the eastern North Carolina region; 2) to improve the health status of citizens in eastern North Carolina via a strong orientation to community-oriented primary care services; and 3) to enhance the access of minority and disadvantaged students to a medical education. Our academic health care center serves a 28 county region of eastern North Carolina, a large geographic area with an approximate population of 1.4 million. The primary vocation in much of eastern North Carolina is agriculture, resulting in a diverse workforce. In response to the growing need for better integration of holistic care for our patients, the Brody School of Medicine has launched a new curriculum development project in spirituality and medicine.
The overall goal of our new Spirituality in Medicine Curriculum is to ensure that our students demonstrate knowledge and competence in providing spiritually sensitive care to diverse patient populations, particularly in the primary care setting, resulting in graduates that provide more compassionate, holistic patient care. To accomplish this overall goal, we have developed a set of fifteen educational objectives that will be addressed across all four years of the medical school curriculum. These objectives were developed in collaboration with our curriculum committees and the course directors of eleven distinct courses/clerkships that all medical students (72 per class) will take. The objectives have been categorized in congruence with the “six general competencies” for ACGME-accredited residency training. Students will work through all objectives by proceeding through the four year curriculum of the medical school; will encounter material in a variety of settings (e.g., classroom, small groups, inpatient and outpatient clinical care facilities); and will be taught using a variety of methods.
One of the most important and concrete learning opportunities for health care professionals concerns the ability to appropriately take a spiritual history from a patient. We will place heavy emphasis on this task in our project, focusing on opportunities to learn this skill set during years one and two; and then promoting opportunities to practice this task during the clinical years. We will focus students' attention on the theory behind the spiritual assessment; the task itself; and how the task can and should be incorporated into holistic practice. Appropriate assessment measures will be used to demonstrate student learning and the effectiveness of this instructional technique. Our project will also feature targeted faculty development activities that are designed to increase the knowledge and teaching skills of attending faculty and resident physicians who teach our medical students. Faculty development will feature such activities as clinical grand rounds sessions; workshops; interactive seminars with chief residents; and panel discussions designed to appeal to a wide audience of health professions educators.
Our project research efforts will focus on “Spiritual Identity Development in Medical Students & Its Relationship to Care”. Our research interest is targeted at the level of the individual medical student who is a future practitioner. Our research examines the ability of a physician to respect spiritual and/or cultural traditions different from his/her own. Our research hypothesis is that there is a positive relationship between the spiritual/cultural identity formation of the individual practitioner and his/her willingness to provide holistic care. We base our research project on the work of Josepha Campinha-Bacote, and her “Culturally Competent Model of Care” for health professionals. Dr. Campinha-Bacote's model theorizes that the ability to provide culturally-sensitive care is based on a combination of cultural awareness, cultural knowledge and cultural skills; these, in turn, play an important role in the “cultural encounter,” whether it takes place in the health care setting or in everyday life.
University of Colorado at Denver
Health Sciences Center
Course Director: Jacqueline J. Glover, PhD, and Julie Swaney, M.Div.
The Spirituality and Medicine curriculum is a new, longitudinal curriculum designed to expose students to and enhance their sensitivity to spiritual and cultural issues impacting illness, health, and healing throughout the life span. This longitudinal curriculum will be an integral part of the new Humanities, Ethics and Professionalism (HEP) Thread spanning four years of medical education. All aspects of this curriculum will be interspersed longitudinally in the required HEP curriculum thread. Students will be able to take electives and advanced study in spirituality and medicine in years three and four. Some aspects of the required curriculum and elective courses will include theology students engaged in Clinical Pastoral Education (UCH) and those attending local seminaries and graduate schools.
Students will broadly explore the spiritual dimension of the nature of illness and the illness experience. They will gain understanding of spirituality and religion, will be exposed to a diversity of beliefs as they impact healthcare decisions and give meaning to the illness experience, will be engaged in self assessment and spiritual history taking, will explore the spiritual dimensions of their practices, and explore issues of professionalism and healthcare as a moral enterprise.
The teaching methods and practices to be used will creatively utilize multidisciplinary faculty to engage learners 1) in the classroom through presentations, panels, use of film, reading of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, personal narrative and reflective writing, small group projects and discussion; 2) in the clinical setting through professional (including physicians and other health care professionals) mentors, patient mentors, and practical experience of taking spiritual histories and addressing spiritual issues with patients with subsequent reflection on those encounters; 3) in personal assessment and reflection on how students' own beliefs, values and assumptions influence the meaning of their practices and the compassion with which they engage others; 4) in research activities designed to address spirituality and health; and 5) in community outreach to engage students in the dialogue of diverse beliefs and health.
The HEP thread, including the Spirituality and Medicine Curriculum, will be integrated into the new curriculum in several ways. The first way is in the campus wide ethics course. The second way is through lectures in “thread time” and through case discussions during the essentials blocks in Phases I and II. The third way is through case discussions as part of Foundations of Doctoring - a longitudinal course that goes through the first three Phases and is designed to teach basic information about the doctor/patient encounter, basic clinical and communication skills, professional behavior, and self-directed and life-long learning skills. The fourth way that thread material will be integrated is in the Phase III clerkships, including special intersessions that are designed to bring all the students back from clerkships to discuss key content like basic science and threads. The fifth and final way that thread material will be integrated is in the planned capstone course in Phase IV and through possible advanced study of questions in spirituality and medicine.
University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston
School of Medicine
University of Texas Medical Branch School of Nursing, School of Medicine; and the Institute of Medical Humanities
Course Directors: M. Kay Sandor, PhD, RN, LPC, AHN; Victor S. Sierpina, MD; Harold Vanderpool, PhD, ThM
Course: Spirituality and Clinical Care
Interdisciplinary Course: The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, will expand and update its ongoing Spirituality and Clinical Care course, first offered in 1999. This required course will continue offering the following elements to all first and second year medical students, junior and senior nursing students, and entry level allied health sciences students:
Research findings related to spirituality and health, and the importance of spirituality in the lives of a large majority of patients.
Tools for assessing the spiritual needs of patients and an opportunity to observe an interdisciplinary team assessing a family.
Opportunities for reflection on personal spiritual practices as a means of self-discovery and as a way to prevent professional burnout or compassion fatigue.
The expansion of the course will emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration between students using an innovative instructional strategy, Team Learning. Students will be placed in interdisciplinary learning teams and engage in active problem-solving activities. Interdisciplinary Web-based case studies will be developed to incorporate basic science, alternative health practices, cultural competence, and spirituality. A written, online assignment-an individual spiritual assessment with personal reflections about the clients and the students own responses to using a spiritual assessment tool in a practice or community setting-will be required.
Graduate Course: The course directors will also develop an interdisciplinary online class for graduate nurses, residents, and upper level allied health science students entitled Spirituality, Culture, and Suffering: Learning the Language of Healing. This course will emphasize the development of moral character and compassion, cultural competence, and spirituality in the context of community, relationship, and discourse.
Research Project: The basic course will include a research project designed to explore the students' attitudes about team learning, their engagement in the course, and changes in their personal spiritual well-being before and after the course. We will evaluate student responses by using a comparison group of nursing, medical, and allied health sciences students at another university who are not participating in interdisciplinary courses taught using team learning strategies.
Summary: The courses will be evaluated for impact, process, and outcomes. (Impact) The course will be promoted on campus Web sites and electronic bulletin boards, and in press releases to the local community. Electronic sites will be monitored for hits to measure interest in the activities related to the courses. In addition, the number of students and the level of participation in the course will be monitored and tracked electronically. (Process) Curricular, course, and student evaluation tools will be evaluated and changes made during the year and over the four years of the funding cycle to improve the effectiveness of the course. These tools will be described and annual reports will be submitted to Gwish. (Outcomes) Student online and face-to-face work will be evaluated. In addition, student engagement will be assessed, student attitudes about teams will be evaluated, and levels of spiritual well-being will be monitored.
University of Vermont
School of Medicine
Course Director: Robert Macauley, MD
Course: Spirituality in Patient Care
“Spirituality in Patient Care” will be a required longitudinal course incorporated into the Vermont Integrated Curriculum, a significant curricular revision which began at the University of Vermont College of Medicine in 2003. The context of the course will include didactic lectures, small group discussions, standardized patient encounters with individual feedback, and interdisciplinary involvement with other hospital disciplines, such as the Department of Pastoral Care.
Various first year courses will distinguish spirituality from religion, examine the ethical aspects of pastoral care, explore the impact of spirituality on the practice of medicine, train students in taking a spiritual history, and review relevant data regarding the relationship between spirituality and health. Second year courses will build on this foundation by discussing the role of spirituality in childhood and at the end of life, as well as by practically incorporating a greater awareness and appreciation of spirituality into clinical encounters with standardized and actual patients.
Several innovative programs are envisioned for the clinical years. First, there will be increased interaction between medical students and the Department of Pastoral Care (including Clinical Pastoral Education students). Second, the three week-long “Bridges” between clinical blocks will include discussions of end-of-life care, complementary and alternative medicine, and a review of how to take a spiritual history and related ethical concerns. Lastly, spirituality will be incorporated into the nearly thirty Observed Structured Clinical Exams (OSCEs) in which students participate. This will enable the course faculty to modify and improve the curriculum by highlighting specific areas that require greater attention.
Primary Care Residency Training Programs
Drexel University
Department of Family, Community and Preventive Medicine
Course Directors: Margaret K. Stockwell, M.D.; Florence Gelo, D.Min.; Rosemary Harris, M.D. Residency Program in Family Medicine; Department of Family, Community and Preventive Medicine; Drexel University College of Medicine
Course: Spiritual Care in the Healing Arts
The primary goal of our curriculum is to improve health care by improving physician-patient communication and relationships. Recognition of the role spirituality plays for all of us in communicating and relating to one another will be our mainstay.
Our curriculum begins with self awareness and self reflection. Learners will then be able to focus on the patient with greater empathy and compassion, and in doing so, strengthen communication and build physician-patient relationships. The curriculum is designed primarily for resident education but medical students, faculty, patients and health care staff will learn as well.
The proposed curriculum will enrich and complement our current End of Life/Palliative Care curriculum which we developed after receiving training from Medical College of Wisconsin's curriculum course. Spiritual Care in the Healing Arts will lead us into new areas as well. It will complement medical student courses all ready in place at Drexel Med and activities in place on the website of the Division of Humanities.
Our residents are currently taught in many ways, in many settings. Spiritual Care in the Healing Arts will become an integral part of our longitudinal curriculum and will be incorporated into many of these settings. The website of the Division of Humanities will be used as a forum for sharing elements of our curriculum within the College of Medicine, and with the other Drexel Med residency programs, the College of Nursing and Health Professions, and the School of Public Health.
Curriculum Objectives
Enhance practitioners' awareness of their own spirituality and its effect on their chosen work of caring for others
Improve knowledge of the diversity of religious beliefs as they relate to medical care and coping with illness, stress and death
Improve understanding of ethnic and cultural practices and their impact on medical care and coping
Improve communication with patients and families based on attitudes, knowledge and behavioral skills that emphasize compassionate listening and actions
Explore ethical principles as they apply to spiritual care in medicine and to professionalism.
Enhance self care, stress management and professional fulfillment
Develop an environment of compassionate care that permeates the medical school, residencies, health care system and the greater community
Foster one or more research projects contributing to knowledge about the impact of spirituality on patient care.
Lenox Hill Hospital
Department of Medicine
Course Director: Julia Andrieni, MD
Course: S.P.I.R.I.T. of Education Program
S.P.I.R.I.T. of Education Program: Spirituality Practice for Internal medicine residents to develop Relationships and provide Integrated and Total medical care.
Located on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Lenox Hill Hospital is a not-for-profit, 652 bed, acute care teaching hospital. The Hospital not only serves the Upper East Side, but also attracts patients from throughout the United States and around the world. In continuous service since 1857, the Hospital has a national reputation for excellence in general medicine, cardiovascular care, orthopedics, otolaryngology/head and neck surgery, and obstetrics and neonatal care. A major teaching affiliate of NYU Medical Center, Lenox Hill Hospital actively trains new physicians in a wide range of medical and surgical specialties, and conducts research in a variety of disciplines. In addition, the Hospital has a variety of educational programs for the community and is a 911 receiving hospital.
In 2002, the Department of Medicine asked the Pastoral Care and Education Department to develop a required course for interns (first year residents) in Spirituality and Medicine. The course was designed for interns during their ambulatory month, two or three students at time. In September 2004, education in spirituality and medicine was expanded to offer four Noontime Lectures, one per quarter, in order to educate residents in the areas of cultural and spiritual competency in medicine. The S.P.I.R.I.T. of Education Program will broaden the education of students in spirituality and medicine even further with the addition of the following:
The Internal Medicine Residency Program curriculum will introduce ALL medical interns to spirituality and medicine topics during their first two orientation months.
Sponsor a grand rounds presentation within the first quarter of the academic year on a spirituality and medicine topic.
Evaluate resident learning in doing spiritual assessment by using an OSCE (Observed Standardized Clinical Examination) in September of the physician's second year of residency training.
Evaluate the learning of residents who elect to take the spirituality and medicine course by requiring a Verbatim seminar to reflect on a patient visit.
S.P.I.R.I.T will also have a research component. We want to find more effective ways to offer emotional and spiritual support to patients in physical crisis and to their families who are facing a psycho/social/spiritual crisis within 48 hours of admission to a critical care unit. Our proposed intervention is: 1) that medical interns take a spiritual history/assessment as part of the medical history for patients within 48 hours of admission, and make appropriate referrals 2) that when the patient is unable to participate in such an assessment, the intern speak to the primary contact person/ health care proxy listed in the chart and assess patient and family needs, and make appropriate referrals. This research project would extend through a year (July-June) on one critical care unit and would give every intern (36 interns) the opportunity to participate during a monthly rotation.
We expect that an intentional, visible, and concerted effort to provide holistic, interdisciplinary care at the outset of patient admission to a critical care unit will result in more compassionate care for patients and families. We expect an increase in early referrals for psychiatry, social work, palliative care consults, and pastoral care, although only pastoral care referrals will be measured in the first year. We expect that we can refine this project in the second and third year of the curriculum, with more rigorous controls and measures, as the institution sees the benefits of such early interdisciplinary measurements.
University of Michigan School of Medicine
Departments of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases
Course Director: Mary Ellen Bozynski, MD, MS
Course: Integrating a Sociocultural Medicine Curriculum in Pediatrics: Part II, Transforming the curriculum into clinical practice
In 2003, the University of Michigan received a John Templeton Spirituality and Medicine Award to integrate a longitudinal and comprehensive sociocultural medicine curriculum into pediatric residency education. The curriculum involved a three-pronged approach targeting the multi-systemic levels of the individual physician, educational infrastructure, and the evolving culture of medical training.
Our newly funded course enhances our sociocultural medicine curriculum by intensifying spiritual care-focused training as it relates to end-of-life, medical ethics, and patient-physician communication.
Specific goals include:
Train faculty to demonstrate and model spiritually/culturally responsive care
Identify and monitor opportunities for residents to apply Sociocultural Medicine (SM)-focused knowledge and skills when working with patients/families
Increase resident exposure to and participation in interdisciplinary efforts (e.g., pediatric ethics committee, transplant evaluation, psychosocial care)
Strengthen residents' role and leadership in case-based teaching within the curriculum and in patient care settings.
Design a portable system to track SM-focused experiences and document the achievement of SM-focused competencies
The course will utilize the previously developed framework targeting the individual physician, educational structure, and the evolving culture of clinical training. In contract to the previous course, this course will be taught in the context of the daily care of patients and families.
To date, there have been no studies examining the baseline skills and knowledge of residents with regard to spiritual care. Furthermore, no research has critically examined the impact of spiritual care education on the development of residents' clinical skills. Given these gaps in the medical education literature, the purpose of the present study is to investigate factors associated with spiritual care proficiency among pediatric residents.
Our research study has three aims: (1) to implement a core curriculum on spiritual care in pediatric residency training at the University of Michigan, (2) to evaluate the impact of the training program on residents' spiritual care skills, and (3) to identify the best predictors of spiritual care proficiency.
Our study will follow a prospective, longitudinal, single cohort design over a period of three years recruiting interns entering the pediatric residency program in June 2005. We will collect baseline data on the resident cohort including demographic background, sociocultural-related education history, attitudes towards sociocultural issues and topics (including cultural awareness and spiritual awareness), and cross-cultural communication skills. We will also examine a number of predictor / intervening variables. The attainment of spiritual care focused communication skills will be measured via resident performance on the breaking bad news OSCE. We will also measure resident self-efficacy and patient satisfaction.
A successfully designed and implemented curriculum may be used as a model for other training programs, both at University of Michigan and elsewhere, in the future.
University of Nevada-Reno School of Medicine
Department of Family and Community Medicine
Course Directors: Denise McKee, M.D., John Chappel, M.D, Noel Tiano, Th.D., Bill Bartlett, D. Min., B.C.C., Melanie Minarik, M.P.H., F.A.C.H.E., Kathy Peele, R.N., P.N.P., Barbara Scott, M.P.H., R.D., University of Nevada School of Medicine, Reno, Nevada
Course: Enrichment of Family Medicine Resident Education With Spirituality Curricula
While family practitioners tend to emphasize human relationships in their work, few are fully prepared to discuss spirituality with their patients and consider this dimension as part of patient care. The mechanization and commercialization of medicine has in some ways widened the gap between patients and doctors, highlighting the need to emphasize compassionate care in medical education. This project will guide the integration of spirituality as a new and important component of our family medicine residency curriculum to help remove some of the barriers that prevent open communication of these important issues between patients and their physicians.
The objectives of the project are tied to the six competency areas expected of a family practice physician: patient care, medical knowledge, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, and systems-based practice. The following objectives are targeted for achievement in this project:
Residents will demonstrate a working knowledge of the physician's role in patient spirituality;
Residents will demonstrate proficiency in spirituality-related skills such as patient interview and history; and
In their behavior, speech, demeanor, and medical care, residents will demonstrate attitudes that convey a awareness of the spiritual dimensions of their own life, world view and its influence on their practice of medicine.
The curriculum for this project will be integrated into existing didactic and experiential opportunities for the Family Medicine residency program to ensure attendance and sustainability. After completion of this three-year project, is it anticipated that spirituality and health will be routinely and regularly integrated in to the list of noon conference topics.
The residents will have the opportunity for many hands-on learning experiences. They will have the opportunity to round with the hospital chaplain, visiting and praying with patients when requested, comforting family members and assisting with advance directive discussions and paperwork.
Outcome measures to be examined will include residents' perception or belief in the importance of spirituality in health care and health outcomes, comfort level in discussing spirituality with patients, personal commitment to and experience with spiritual practice, quality of spiritual inventory/assessment (compassionate, non-judgmental, thorough, etc.), patient satisfaction with care , and patient adherence to treatment (i.e. number of missed/cancelled appointments, completion of referrals, making recommended behavioral changes, taking medications, etc.).
Psychiatry Residency Training Programs
Rush University Medical Center
Department of Religion, Health and Human Values
Course Director: Patricia Murphy, PhD
Course: Bridging the Gap: Science and Spirituality
Bridging the Gap: Science and Spirituality Curriculum at Rush University Medical Center responds to the growing body of research that relates religion/spirituality to health outcomes as well as the shifting sensitivity to cultural ethnicities reflected in the DSM-IV. The curriculum integrates research, theory, and clinical experience.
Lectures over the three year period are as follows:
Religious/Spiritual Beliefs of Diverse Groups
What I Wish My Doctor Knew About My Spirituality
Assessing Spiritual Resources and Struggles
Access to Spirituality for the Physician
Brief Interventions to Help Patients Access Spirituality
Addressing Spirituality at the End of Life
Spirituality and Self Psychology
Spirituality and Cognitive Theory
Spirituality and Developmental Stages
Ethics in Discussing Religion/Spirituality with Patients
Each year, residents address issues of transference and countertransference related to religion/spirituality in Psychiatric Resident Case Presentations.
Grand Rounds presentations, which extend our training to the others at Rush and at neighboring medical centers, include “From Research to Practice: Advances in Spiritually-Integrated Treatment” by Kenneth Pargament, Ph.D. and “Recent Research in Religion and Depression” by Patricia Murphy, Ph.D. in the first year of the curriculum. In the second and third years of the curriculum, Grand Rounds topics are Spirituality and Psychotherapy and God Images and Object Relations.
First year residents participate with the chaplain in the Spiritual Resources Group on the adult psychiatry inpatient units. Second year residents are orientated to bereavement related to perinatal death and accompany a chaplain attending to a death in labor and delivery or the neonatal intensive care units. They also participate in the spirituality groups as part of their rotation in chemical dependency. Third and fourth year residents incorporate their training into outpatient practice.
University of British Columbia
Vancouver General Hospital
Course Directors: Soma Ganesan, MD FRCP; Andrea Grabovac, MD FRCP
Course: Interface between Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry
The “Interface between Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry” course for psychiatry residents at the University of British Columbia promotes increased understanding of spiritual aspects of self and others and the effective translation of this knowledge into clinical practice. The mandatory 10 session didactic course is taught by faculty from diverse backgrounds, including pastoral care, counseling psychology, religious studies and psychiatry. In addition, an elective quarterly Journal Club focused on this topic and departmental grand rounds provide opportunity for further discussion and exploration.
Improved education at the resident level is essential for raising physicians' awareness of the importance of spirituality in patient care. Teaching residents must therefore also be coupled with course evaluations that measure the efficacy of the training that residents receive, in order to determine if the goals of the educational program are being met in the most effective way. Therefore, in addition to the standard course evaluations completed by residents, course effectiveness will be evaluated using a Course Impact Questionnaire that will be administered at the beginning of the course, at wk 10 and again at 6-month followup.
Learning objectives for the didactic portion of the course include the current understanding of the relationship between religious and spiritual beliefs and physical and mental health, introduction to spiritual phenomenology, including spiritual emergencies (e.g., Kundalini episodes), current research literature on neurobiology of spiritual experience and spiritual/religious issues in psychodynamic therapy (e.g., significance of God images). By the end of the course, residents have learned the skills to take a spiritual/religious history, to incorporate information gathered into the biopsychosocialspiritual understanding of the patient, and to reflect this in the diagnosis and treatment plan. They are able to identify how their own spiritual/religious beliefs might impact their case formulation, diagnosis and management plans and recognize and work through transference and countertransference reactions. Criteria for referral to chaplains, spiritual directors or culturally based healers are reviewed.
Clinical application of above material will be through supervised assessments, formulation and management of cases. Elective sites include the Vancouver Hospital Psychiatry Cross-cultural Clinic, which is a an outpatient psychiatric clinic staffed by a team of psychiatrists speaking seventeen different languages, and the British Columbia Cancer Agency, where treatment includes palliative care and end-of-life issues.
University of Kansas Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Course Director: Joan M.T. Collison, MD
Course: Development of a Departmental-Based Curriculum of Spirituality in Healthcare for Psychiatry Residents, other Healthcare Professionals, and Clergy/Pastoral Care Professionals
Implementation of this course is based upon the underlying premise that attending to the spiritual dimension of patients' lives is a vital aspect of the foundational imperative of medicine to heal. Although human spirituality is often unrecognized, it remains a powerful source of both strength and challenge for all lives impacted by illness, both as patients and as those who care for patients within personal or professional relationships. For healthcare professionals, awareness of our own personal spirituality is key to deepening our understanding of the interrelationship of spiritual, psychological, and physical aspects of health, while also essential to growth in our capacity for sensitive attunement and compassionate response to the spiritual needs of patients within the healthcare environment.
Goals of this course include:
Facilitating ongoing growth in knowledge, understanding, awareness, and appreciation of the nature of the interrelationship of the human spiritual dimension and health, particularly as spirituality impacts and is impacted by physical and mental illness and suffering
Identifying the role of spirituality in all facets of healthcare, and fostering the skills and confidence of healthcare professionals to recognize and respond to spiritual aspects of patient care in a respectful, sensitive, and appropriate manner
Recognizing and responding to the uniquely fertile ground of healthcare for spiritual challenge, struggle, growth, and healing by building an institutional environment attuned and prepared to identify and readily address spiritual concerns, issues, and need of patients
Fostering a healthcare climate that stimulates and encourages individuals striving to provide fully compassionate care, by providing intra- and inter-disciplinary support of healthcare professionals endeavoring to integrate spirituality and healthcare within personal and professional roles
Exploring the role of spirituality in psychological growth and development, mental health, and mental illness, and identifying leadership opportunities and responsibilities to expand the integration of spiritual care into psychiatric and other medical care.
Participation in core didactic lectures is required for psychiatric residents, and open to medical, nursing, and social work students, as well as other healthcare professionals performing psychiatric rotations during the course. Master's and doctoral level students from local seminaries, and local chaplaincy students, will also be invited to participate in core didactic sessions. Psychiatry residents will be encouraged to participate in a course-based research project assessing spiritual care needs of patients receiving acute or chronic mental healthcare services. The course additionally includes annual grand rounds, and ongoing individually structured small learning groups, designed to offer additional in-depth and specifically focused educational opportunities spanning the 3-year curriculum. These will be publicized and open to healthcare and spiritual care professionals throughout the University of Kansas and local Kansas City medical community. Selected didactic courses may also be repeated in evening sessions to accommodate a greater number of course participants, based upon interest levels of small group and grand rounds participants.
University of South Carolina School of Medicine
Department of Neuropsychiatry
Course Director: Craig Stuck, MD
Course: Palmetto Health/University of South Carolina Curriculum on Spirituality: Incorporating a Spiritual Worldview within Psychiatry in the Bible Belt
The Spirituality and Cultural Competency Psychiatry Curriculum at the University of South Carolina involves integration of didactic and rotational experiences within the general and child psychiatry residency programs. It also includes a unique collaboration of disciplines including faculty and students from psychiatry, psychology, and seminary programs. The goal of this curriculum is to educate, motivate, and encourage integration of spiritual issues into psychiatric practice.
The vertical curriculum includes seminars on spiritual and cultural worldviews while allowing for resident led workshops and elective experiences. At least four of the spirituality seminar topics are variable, chosen each year by residents according to their own experiences or that of their patients. In the adult psychiatry program, the PGY1 year includes four introductory seminars as well as spiritual/cultural issues of the southeast. The PGY2 year includes eight seminars encompassing resident chosen topics such as spirituality in a dying patient, African American spirituality in our community, spiritual assessment within the Hispanic culture, and the complexities of patients with disabilities. In the PGY3 year, six months of community experience encourages interaction among various cultures and subcultures different from that of the resident. There are also two seminars on consult liaison case presentations, spirituality and pain medicine. In the PGY 4 year, the spirituality elective includes an opportunity for each resident to explore a culture or subculture of interest. Throughout all PGY levels there are weekly seminars on psychopharmacology, interviewing, and the `biopsychosociospiritual' formulation. Spirituality is emphasized and integrated in each of these curricula and requires separate supervisor/supervisee evaluation forms.
The Child and Adolescent Residency extends the spirituality curriculum with eight seminars addressing child development, psychopathology and spirituality, core beliefs and practices of major faiths, and resident panel discussions of personal and clinical experiences.
Four workshops bring together 2nd year adult psychiatry residents, 2nd year child psychiatry residents, psychology interns, and 2nd year seminary students. Faculty from the seminaries, psychiatry and psychology programs present information to foster greater understanding of the objectives and abilities of each discipline in providing care for people with emotional problems, distinguishing similar and unique aspects. Case presentations highlight the importance of addressing spiritual and mental health issues. Small group discussions create the opportunity for the students to interact with other disciplines, reinforcing the model of collaboration by the interdisciplinary faculty.
