Assessment

Summative Paper 100%

Module Aims

This year long module facilitates learners to study professional healthcare chaplaincy in pastoral and institutional contexts. It will present and explore fundamental presuppositions on practice of healthcare ministry, through reflection on the experience of pain and alienation from body, self, and others, and the consequent solidarity of the community, institutionalised in the healthcare system. It will tease out key ministerial, ethical, and professional principles, through consideration of relevant case-studies. The module considers three broad areas (a) ministerial issues, such as the pastoral encounter, the mystery of suffering, psychological models (b) professional issues such as cultural diversity, power, and boundaries and (c) ethical issues such as consent, codes, duty, social justice, and human dignity. Finally, it aims to familiarise learners with codes of behaviour and ethics as they relate to Catholic healthcare in Ireland.

Indicative Syllabus

Semester One

• Articulating Meaning: Central Themes and Models of Spiritual Ministry and Pastoral Care to the Sick
• Understandings the Mystery of Suffering and Solidarity as a Community, made present in ministry/chaplaincy
• Theological Anthropology: Implications of the Patient as a Person, Free, Embodied, Relational and Transcendent
• Medical and Christian Values and Professional Principles: human dignity, human goods and common good, beneficence, autonomy, justice and advocacy
• Case studies including: decision making; confidentiality; at the beginning and end of life
• On the Experience of loss, death and bereavement
• Celebrating the Healing Process: on accompaniment, prayer and ritual.

Semester Two

• The Identity of Professional Health Care Chaplaincy: organisational ethos; professional practice and parameters
• Justice and Social Responsibility: on the Irish healthcare system; funding models; issues of allocation and access; ethics committees and advocacy
• Pastoral Care with and for other Healthcare Professionals: interdisciplinary teams, awareness of power; professional boundaries
• Further Case studies including: non-autonomous patients, mental health, paediatrics and Family care; and Conscientious Objection.
• On cultural diversity: intercultural, gender and generational considerations.

Learning Outcomes

• — LO 1: construct an appropriate theological anthropology by which the experience of illness, and the psychological journey of loss, may be addressed and models of medical and pastoral care may be explicated
• — LO 2: appraise the development of professional healthcare chaplaincy, including current challenges to its identity within the wider professional environment, such as articulation of purpose, professional boundaries, and navigating team practice, and cultural diversity.
• — LO 3: critically evaluate issues in related to personal autonomy and duty of care, social justice, human dignity and cultural diversity by way of fundamental principles in healthcare ethics
• — LO 4: construct a coherent appraisal of healthcare practice and case-studies by way of ethical and professional principles, in a hospital setting
• — LO 5: evaluate the socio-political developments that have informed the Irish healthcare system and tease out central challenges to any potential restructuring
• — LO 6: appraise the opportunities and challenges in addressing diverse cultural norms in a hospital setting.

Bibliography

• — Corkery. Bioethics and the Catholic Moral Tradition. Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2010
• — Aldridge. D. Spirituality, Healing and Medicine. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2000.
• — Matthews, Pia. Ethical Questions in Healthcare Chaplaincy. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2018.
• — Gula, Richard. Just Ministry. New York: Paulist Press, 2010.
• — The Consultative Group on Bioethics & the Council for Healthcare of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference. Code of Ethical Standards for Healthcare. Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2018
• — O’Donovan, P. ‘Healthcare Chaplaincy,’ The Furrow, Vol. 59, No. 5 (May, 2008), 264-273.
• — Pangrazzi, A. The Art of Caring for the Sick: Guidelines for Creative Ministry. St. Pauls 2013
• — Patton, J. Pastoral Care: An Essential Guide. Abingdon Press 2005
• — Pye, I and P. Sedgwick and A. Todd (eds). Critical Care: Delivering Spiritual Care in Healthcare Contexts. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2015.
• — Quinlan, J. Pastoral Relatedness: The Essence of Pastoral Care. University Press of America, Inc. 2002
• — Arbuckle, G.A. Healthcare Ministry: Refounding the Ministry in Tumultuous Times. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000.
• — Lysaught, Therese M. (ed) On Moral Medicine. 3nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012.
• — Meilaender, Gilbert. Neither Beast nor God: The Dignity of the Human Persons. New York & London: New Atlantis Books: 2009.
• — Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, New Charter for Health Care Workers. The National Catholic Bioethics Centre, Philadelphia 2017
• — O’Rourke K. and P Boyle. Eds. Medical Ethics: Sources of Catholic Teachings. 4th edn. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2011
• — Cobb, M, and Christina M. Puchalski , MD, and Bruce Rumbold. Eds. Oxford Textbook of Spirituality and Healthcare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• — George Iitchett and Steve Nolan, eds. Spiritual Care in Practice: Case Studies in Healthcare Chaplaincy. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2015.
• — Journals available on Maynooth Library Online: The Hastings Centre Report