Date
4-26-2024
Department
Rawlings School of Divinity
Degree
Doctor of Ministry (DMin)
Chair
Mario Garcia
Keywords
Spiritual care, Holistic healing, Emotional support, Effective spiritual care, Barriers to effective spiritual care, Cultural competence, and sensitivity, Spiritual care education, the significance of spiritual care, respect for religious diversity, interdisciplinary collaboration, legal and ethical concerns, and grief and end-of-life care
Disciplines
Counseling
Recommended Citation
Eke, Mary Pamela, "Spiritual Care and the Art of Holistic Healing at Swedish Hospital in Chicago" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 5417.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5417
Abstract
Despite the importance of spiritual care as an act of holistic healing process, there has continued to be a problem of imbalance between the physical care, and the spiritual and emotional care with cardiac care patients. The purpose of this DMIN action research project is to develop and implement a model of holistic healing for integrating spiritual and emotional care alongside physical treatment. This project’s main goal is to promote a sense of connectivity across the various aspects of physical, social, emotional, and spiritual care for cardiac care patients at Swedish Hospital in Chicago. Utilizing qualitative research methods for data collection, the interdisciplinary team at Swedish Hospital in Chicago provided insights into current care practices and identified opportunities for improvement. The qualitative data were analyzed using the thematic analysis structure as a framework to interpret the data based on five different themes: holistic care, the need for support system, effective communication and collaboration, impact of spiritual and emotional care interventions, and barriers to integration of spiritual care. The data were further coded and tallied to ascertain the response frequencies and percentages using the multiple-response model where each coded response had the opportunity of reoccurring multiple times. The results were presented point by point, addressing the research questions of the study. From the findings, this work asserts that by providing training opportunities for healthcare providers, some barriers to effective spiritual care can be overcome, and equal attention can be given to patient’s physical, spiritual, social and emotional care, and their health and recovery process can be enhanced.