Research
In a collaborative effort between Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center and the Emory Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, the Department of Spiritual Health is engaged in a multi-year, multi-study research effort to investigate the potential benefits of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) for chaplains and the effect of CBCT-adapted bedside interventions on patient outcomes.
This research program leverages a change in Emory’s clinical pastoral education curriculum in which all residents are now completing a course in CBCT. During the first few years of the program, half of the residents completed CBCT during the first unit of residency and the remainder during the third unit. The staggered training times allow for a comparison between chaplain outcomes and the outcomes of patients seen by spiritual health clinicians differentially exposed to CBCT-adapted interventions.
The foundational research for this effort is a cross-sectional survey on the frequency and distribution of sources of distress among hospital inpatients. This study is largely complete although the data continue to be analyzed for associations between hospital distress and important clinical outcomes such as anxiety and pain. While providing important information in its own right, this foundational study has also provided data important for guiding the development of CBCT-adapted interventions that can be used at the bedside with hospitalized patients.
A pilot study to examine the effect of CBCT on the chaplains’ empathic accuracy, compassion fatigue, burnout, and wellbeing found benefits to chaplains in these measures. Similar data are currently being analyzed from a larger study on the past two residency cohorts. In this larger study, we are also evaluating the effect of the CBCT-adapted interventions on patients. To accomplish this, we have surveyed patients for distress and wellbeing before and after receiving a spiritual health consult from chaplains trained in CBCT vs. those waiting to be trained.
A subset of these consults have been audio-recorded and are being analyzed qualitatively to explore how chaplains are employing CBCT in their practice. Additionally, we are interviewing chaplains to qualitatively evaluate how CBCT is being received, understood, and practiced. This study program reflects Emory’s focus on the three pillars of CPE: service, education, and research and Emory’s commitment to leading the development of evidence-based, compassion-centered spiritual health in the medical setting.
Meet the Team
Patricia “Kim” Palmer, M.Div, M.S.P.H., BCC
Manager of Research, Woodruff Health Sciences Center, Emory University
View Kim's Profile
Emory Receives NIH Award Toward Clinical Spiritual Health
Although chaplains have long cared for the medically ill, their value for American healthcare has received increasing attention as recognition grows that spiritual health clinicians provide a much needed healing human connection in hospital and clinic environments that are often alienating and impersonal. Because these spiritual health clinicians are already professionally embedded within many healthcare systems, they are also optimally placed to provide wellness interventions that many patients and staff desire, but that healthcare systems frequently find difficult to provide.
Recognizing these challenges and opportunities, Emory Spiritual Health has embarked upon an ambitious program of research aimed at developing and testing strategies for enhancing the ability of chaplains to care for their patients and co-workers. Because providing compassion is so central to the work of chaplaincy, Spiritual Health is collaborating with the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics at Emory University (Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, Exec. Dir.) to integrate Cognitively-Based Compassion Training, or CBCT®, into the education of chaplains-in-training. This training forms a foundation for Emory’s new Compassion-Centered Spiritual Health (CCSH™) initiative, a comprehensive program that trains chaplains to provide interventions and approaches tailored for the specific needs of different clinical and staff-based settings.
“My years spent researching meditation as a health intervention have convinced me that chaplains—spiritual health clinicians, as Dr. Grant promotes—represent a unique and key resource for humanizing the face of American medicine,” said Charles L. Raison, MD, Director of Research at Emory Spiritual Health. “Because of this, Dr. Mascaro’s career award has implications not just for the patients she will help, but for the medical system as a whole. Given how overstretched our system is, we need to wisely use all available resources. Just as surgeons, internists, nurses and other healthcare clinicians perform their own unique roles in healthcare, chaplains are charged with bringing compassion to bear to address the spiritual and emotional needs of their patients. As such I believe they play an irreplaceable role in healthcare, and a role that we hope to optimize by studying how they might best contribute to Improving Lives and Providing Hope.”
Spiritual Health Research Publications
The following publications represent Emory's contributions to the field, both from our internal research program and in the context of our collaboration with others. Click on each title to view the citation, abstract, and full text (if available).
Compassion Meditation Training for Hospital Chaplain residents: A Pilot Study
Training Healthcare Chaplains: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow