All of Me: Patient-Centered Spirituality for Holistic Caregiving

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All of Me illuminates how chaplains, hospital caregivers, and clergy can provide spiritual care for those who are sick, in hospitals, preparing for surgery, or recovering. It is based on interviews with 40 hospital and ER patients about their experiences endured, lessons learned, and insights gained, both positive and negative, while receiving direct patient care. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature as these intersect with and inform the role of spirituality for holistic wellbeing, including medical, social sciences, ethics, philosophy, spirituality, theology, and religious studies, the book provides insights and practical tools to help practitioners and students understand and appreciate the significance of spiritual care.

Looking through the lens of a justice perspective for compassion and mercy for the marginalized in a postmodern and increasingly non-religious context, this patient-informed research documents patient and/or caregiver misconceptions regarding the essence of spirituality as it intersects with direct patient care, and how hospitals can and should improve spiritually-informed compassionate care whereby caregivers identify, acknowledge, respect, and support spirituality /spiritual care to foster holistic patient wellbeing. A pastoral spiritual reflective assessment identifies places where patients, families, medical caregivers, and clergy can expand their patient care compassion to enhance spiritual wellbeing, while also finding points of entry for the personal agency of patients during their physically/spiritually vulnerable hospital stay.

Author Bio

Rev. Dr. Helen T. Boursier, PhD, is a public theologian, educator, author, activist, ordained minister, and artist who advocates for justice. She teaches gender studies; spirituality through a justice-informed lens to nursing and social work students; theology; and religious studies at the College of St. Scholastica. An ordained Presbyterian minister, she was a volunteer chaplain with displaced migrants at the US-Mexico border (2014-2022). Her books include Desperately Seeking Asylum: Testimonies of Trauma, Courage, and Love (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); The Ethics of Hospitality: An Interfaith Response to U.S. Immigration Policies (Lexington Books, 2019); Art as Witness: A Practical Theology of Arts-Based Research (Lexington Books, 2021); Willful Ignorance: Overcoming the Limitations of (Christian) Love for Refugees Seeking Asylum (Lexington Books, 2022); and Precious Precarity: A Spirituality of Borders (2024).