Transdisciplinary approaches to spiritual care: A chaplain's perspective

摘要

Conventional forms of healthcare are built on disciplinary thinking and practices that compartmentalize problems, treat delineated parts and dislocate the medical condition from the wider context of a person's life. In contrast, palliative care is founded upon a holistic philosophy that aims to understand and care for the whole person, and because this approach acknowledges that complex dynamic real-world problems cannot be addressed through a monocular view it works through the collaborative efforts of a multidisciplinary team. Transdisciplinary teams are strongly holistic through accommodating a breadth of perspectives, forging new interpretations and meanings, and developing coherent practices. In this study we discuss the value of transdisciplinary forms of palliative care and consider how this may apply to spiritual care. We consider spirituality as a complex, dynamic, and multidimensional field that can benefit from a transdisciplinary approach and outline the necessary conditions for spiritual care to be integrated into the practice of a transdisciplinary team. Finally, we consider the role of the chaplain in the team and the unique contribution of a chaplain's training and formation. We conclude that while transdisciplinary approaches to palliative care remain atypical it may be conceived as an expression of the most radical form of palliative care in all its dimensions.