Healthcare chaplains, also known as spiritual care providers, can play a key role in advancing hospitals’ and health systems’ strategic priorities.

These professionals typically support organizations in three areas: workforce well-being, patient experience and access to care.

Jason Lesandrini, PhD, assistant vice president of ethics, advance care planning, spiritual health and language access services at Marietta, Ga.-based Wellstar Health System, and Kelsey White, PhD, assistant professor and chaplaincy faculty researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy, have been working to improve chaplains’ integration in healthcare through partnerships with executives.

“What we are really trying to push is how healthcare executives think about these experts,” Dr. White said on a recent episode of the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.” “We want to move away from them as this nice addition that we have on the healthcare team, and more thinking about them as strategic players in advancing an organization’s goals.”

What is a healthcare chaplain?

Chaplains are members of the interdisciplinary team who attend to the spiritual health of patients, families and other staff members. They are directly employed by a healthcare organization, unlike volunteers or community clergy, Dr. White said. Professional chaplains often have graduate degrees and about a year of clinical training.

While the term “spiritual health” can be vague, it refers to how individuals make sense out of the world around them, she said.

“How do we process difficult experiences and connect to others interpersonally and with our own identity?” Dr. White said. “For many, this ends up getting connected back to their religious identity, but not always. Professional chaplains are really trained to care for those across religious traditions and even care for those who may identify as spiritual, humanist or nothing in particular.”

Services chaplains provide

Chaplains are often involved in workforce well-being efforts, such as a “Code Blue response strategy,” where a spiritual care provider is present during resuscitation, either to lead a pause after a death or to support clinicians or family members, Dr. Lesandrini said.

“We know from literature that spiritual care providers are spending between 20% and 30% of their time caring for staff who are struggling with either aspects of their job or their own personal lives,” Dr. White said. “When I worked as an outpatient chaplain, I actually spent close to 50% of my time caring for staff who were in the midst of personal crises, health emergencies, finding out news about a loved one across the country — all sorts of things that would come up that would warrant some additional support.”

Beyond one-on-one care, chaplains can support communication between staff and family members. VCU Health employs a family communication coordinator who navigates between the family, clinical team and organ procurement organization to reduce role ambiguity and stress. That person also helps maintain the trust built by the clinical team, Dr. White said.

Patient experience is another pillar. At one Wellstar facility, chaplains connect with patients within 48 hours of admission.

“It wasn’t [that they] had to do prayer or anything with them, it was just a support tool that we used,” Dr. Lesandrini said. “What we found in the units where we did that versus the units that we didn’t were significantly higher scores of patient experience, and we controlled for all the other counterbalancing factors that could be happening in the unit.”

Chaplains can also improve access to care.

“We know that chaplains are an untapped resource in this space, and we see it happening in new ways,” Dr. Lesandrini said. “For example, at one of our sites, we do a telechaplaincy program where we follow up with patients who have been diagnosed with any particular disease, just to give a supportive ear to patients. We find that this extends the connection of the organization back to the chaplain, and it provides support and counseling to a patient as they’re going through illness.”

A seat at the table

For organizations looking to better integrate chaplains, Dr. Lesandrini stressed the importance of including them in decision-making.

“Healthcare leaders should ask spiritual care providers to be present in their team meetings, in their process planning,” he said. “It’s not about spiritual care providers being an add-on to some project; it’s about being integrated into that project.”

When chaplains are involved from the beginning, they should speak up as to where they can provide support, he said.

“What better way to ensure that [patients are] experiencing care and compassion than to focus on the people who are expertly trained in providing care and compassion?” Dr. Lesandrini said. “Spiritual care providers are in the top echelon of that bucket. … I really think there’s a unique opportunity for folks to do that, and I think the No. 1 lesson is really to just give them the opportunity to be at that table to do it.”

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