Catholic Chaplains face challenges of conflicts between families and physicians on issues of pulling off and keeping life support during end-of-life care. When conflict ensues between physicians and families in situations like this, chaplains are often called in. On the one hand, physicians recognize that chaplains have the ability to relate with families, have their trust, and so can persuade them to change their minds. On the other hand, families try to use chaplains to beat back their perceived pessimism of physicians and their suggestion to terminate life-support. While some chaplains tend to take sides with families as a way of showing religious solidarity, others tend to align with physicians as a needful collaboration with the hospital’s interdisciplinary team.
This project repositions chaplains, so that instead of aligning to either side, they may maintain professional integrity and leverage their position to foster new and generative conversations by using the story telling techniques of Walter Fluker in an abbreviated Story Circle. Chaplains create new possibilities by building trust through ensuring ministry for both physicians and families, and establishing mutual respect, and good communication. This will mitigate the conflicts that occur at the intersections in health care service.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/48772 |
| Date | 16 May 2024 |
| Creators | Nze, Ignatius Nwachinemere Chidi |
| Contributors | Decosimo, Joseph D. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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