Professional practices of spiritual care and empowerment in transitions of life - Place for one external PhD candidate

Field of Research:    Chaplaincy / spiritual care; and /or moral distress in professional work   

Spiritual care is the professional guidance and counselling of persons, groups and organizations with questions regarding meaning in life and moral orientation. It is changing significantly in the wake of globalization and secularization, resulting in the fragmentation of traditional religions and the emergence of various sorts of new and independent forms of spirituality. Spiritual care is not limited to individual counselling and guidance, but increasingly focuses on support and education of professionals and leaders addressing moral and political issues within plural communities, organizations and society. The focus of this research topic is to develop insights into the current, transforming and new practices of spiritual care, especially within the domain of social care, primary care and home care. This may include narrative and embodied humanistic counselling methods, arts-based methods and their unique value (outcomes) to individual persons, groups or organizations; the collaboration between different professions (interprofessional collaboration) in responding to the diverse existential, spiritual and moral needs of people in a swiftly changing world; as well as the learning involved in developing spiritual care practices amongst different disciplines. 

Meaningful living as a central concept in the UHS research program has been theorized by philosophers and psychologists mostly from a white-western, individualistic and cognitive perspective.  In this research topic we welcome PhD students to conduct research into existential needs and meaningful living connected to marginalization and exclusion, injustice and violence, moral issues, societal transformation and losses; and from a critical, relational and/or transformational perspective. The methodology may include participatory action research, arts-based research, phenomenological research and interaction analysis; mixed methods and the methodological challenges involved in conducting research on meaning in life and meaning-making practices in general. 

Empowering professional practices

Research shows that moral distress and moral injury of professionals is a growing problem, resulting in demotivation, burnout and moral erosion of organizations. The focus of this research topic is on fostering meaningful work of professionals, in particular chaplains (spiritual care workers), health care workers, military personnel or police officers. Research may include the development and/or evaluation of meaningful education programs; meaningful/ moral resilience interventions; and personal, collective and organizational measures to foster meaningful work. The role of chaplaincy in empowering meaningful practices may be part of this research topic. 

• What does meaning in life entail from a diversity perspective and what instruments and methods are suitable in studying it?

• What is the role of embodiment in the spiritual care relationship and what does it possibly add to the existing conceptualization of narrative or presence approaches?  

• What interventions contribute to preventing moral distress of health care workers, both on an individual, group, organizational and societal level?

• What is chaplains' contribution to fostering moral resilience of healthcare workers / army veterans? 

 One external PhD candidate

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