5 Use appropriately one’s professional authority as a chaplain.
6 Advocate for the persons in one’s care.
PIC 5 and PIC 6 fit together well as the chaplain appropriately exercises authority while also demonstrating how that authority is wielded for care recipients. Much of CPE education is devoted to teaching authority as it relates to the chaplain’s identity. One area I want to focus on in the practical application of this competency is clinical decision-making. Chaplains have religious authority by vocation and expertise. The knowledge of diverse religious approaches to life and death allows them to advocate for the religious needs of a care recipient, even (or especially) when those religious needs are not the same as the chaplains.
One article illustrates this exchange of authority between a family, a rabbi, and the medical team with the chaplain’s meditation.[1] For a volume of multiple examples where these dynamics are shown see the work of Wirpsa and Pugliese.[2]
[1] Susan Harris, “Chaplains’ Roles as Mediators in Critical Clinical Decisions,” AMA Journal of Ethics 20, no. 7 (2018): 672.
[2] Jeanne Wirpsa and Karen Pugliese, eds., Chaplains as Partners in Medical Decision-Making: Case Studies in Healthcare Chaplaincy (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2020), 25.
Leave a Reply