Professional development for spiritual care practitioners: a program review

Abstract

Professional development is a crucial aspect for further successful progression of an individual’s skills and effective function in their role. It is also a compulsory part of registration for most professionals in the health care sector. This article reports on the evaluation of a monthly professional development program, specifically for spiritual care practitioners, offered over the period 2017–2019 by Spiritual Health Association (Victoria, Australia) and its partners. Many common themes such as motivation, culture, purpose and areas for improvement have been identified and are further examined. Recommendations such as greater emphasis on the professionalism in the sector, broader inclusions of sessions across culture and ethnicity and the development of cross disciplinary communication skills are made for the future of this program.

Keywords:

• Chaplaincy
• education
• professionalisation
• professional development
• spiritual care

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the work of Laura-Beth Donnison and Natasha Popovic students of La Trobe University on placement for their work in collating and analysing the data from feedback evaluation sheets.