IU Health / Regenstrief study helps chaplains care for families in crisis

From EurekaNews:

A new model developed and implemented by the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University Health provides chaplains with a framework to deliver better care to families and surrogate decision makers during health emergencies.

“In times of crisis, patients and their families turn to hospital chaplains to provide spiritual support,” says Alexia Torke, M.D., lead author of a study in the April issue of the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy. “While chaplains serve a powerful role supporting the families of people in the hospital, previous research has shown that many families miss seeing a chaplain in intensive care settings because the family members have many other responsibilities such as children or jobs, or simply are not in the patient’s unit when the chaplain visits.” Dr. Torke is a Regenstrief Institute research scientist and Director of The Daniel F. Evans Center for Spiritual and Religious Values in Healthcare at Indiana University Health.

Read more. Also participating in the study as co-author was Saneta Maiko, a Transforming Chaplaincy Fellow.