“Reading” the room: healthcare chaplains’ challenges, insights and variations in entering rooms and engaging with patients and families

Abstract

Recent research has described broad types of healthcare chaplains’ activities, but many questions remain about how these professionals perform these tasks, whether variations occur, and if so, in what ways. Twenty-three chaplains were interviewed in-depth. Chaplains described engaging in highly dynamic processes, involving both verbal and non-verbal interactions. They face challenges and vary in ways of starting interactions, using verbal and non-verbal cues, and communicating through physical appearance. In these processes, when entering patients’ rooms, they seek to “read the room,” follow patients’ leads, look for cues, match the energy/mood in the room, and adjust their body language appropriately, while maintaining open-ended stances. They face choices of what, if anything, to communicate through clothing (e.g., wearing clerical collars or crosses) and can confront additional challenges with members of groups different than their own, at times requiring further sensitivity. These data, the first to examine challenges chaplains confront entering patients’ rooms and engaging in non-verbal communication, can enhance understandings of these issues, and help chaplains and other healthcare professionals provide more sensitive and astute context-based care. These findings thus have critical implications for education, practice, and research concerning chaplains and other providers.

Keywords:

• Body language
• chaplains
• non-verbal communication
• provider-patient communication
• trust

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Rebecca R. Grinberg, Beverly Gu, Timothy Keith Hung, and especially Patricia Contino for their assistance with the preparation of this manuscript.

Ethical approval

The research reported in this paper was performed in accordance with the guidelines and regulations outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. The Columbia University Department of Psychiatry Institutional Review Board approved the study (#7969).

Consent to participate

All participants provided informed consent. Before the interview, the PI asked if the participant had had an opportunity to read a previously emailed information sheet and if so, had any questions, which the PI then answered. Participants who had read the information sheet, had no remaining questions and agreed to participate then provided informed consent that the PI theus documented. The PI then conducted the interview.

Consent to publish

The authors affirm that human research participants provided informed consent for publication.

Authors’ contributions

Dr. Robert Klitzman: study’s conception and design, acquisition of data, interpretation of data, drafting, revision, and approval of the final manuscript. Gabrielle Di Sapia Natarelli, Elizaveta Garbuzova, Stephanie Sinnappan, and Jay Al-Hashimi: data analysis and interpretation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.