Chaplaincy care—as a ministry, profession, academic discipline, and corps—is clinical.
Chaplaincy care is not guesswork. You do not impose a care style on a counselee. Like other forms of care, chaplaincy has step-by-step practice procedures according to acceptable standards of practice and ethical codes. Chaplains attend to people’s life issues through various talk therapies. They do not prescribe drugs. Care must therefore be taken as we deal with “Living Human Documents.”
MORE: Stories of Chaplain Life
It is a fact that chaplains are relevant to the recovery of patients in health and other related sectors. Chaplaincy care clinical procedure focuses on the step-by-step patterns that care is provided to the counselee, patient, care receiver, care seeker, or client by the chaplain (therapist, counsellor, life coach, mentor, care giver).
This article will highlight an easy chaplaincy care procedure:
1) Assessment: Understanding the need
This first step is achieved through various assessment models to investigate or research to find out what is the issue with the counselee. Do not proceed without assessment.
2) Diagnosis: Identifying the core issue
This next step is the result of assessment. It indicates what is actually the issue or issues of life affecting the counselees. It may be spiritual, psychospiritual, psychosocial, religious etc.
3) Plan: Crafting a personalized approach
In this step—also known as the care plan—the chaplain identifies an approach or a method, theory, remedy, solution, or therapy to use in providing care to the counselee. It includes a step-by-step plan of action on how care will be provided. There are many talk therapies like prayer, counseling, psychotherapy, and others cutting across spiritual care, religious care, psychological care, sociological care, and pastoral care available for the use of the chaplain one or a combination.
4) Care: Providing direct support
This step—also known as intervention, treatment or administration of care—is the actual attention given to the counselee. It is simply the actual care administration.
5) Evaluation: Measuring the impact
This is the use of various evaluation methodologies to find out how effective or otherwise the care rendered was. This stage is critical because it helps the Chaplain in taking the next decision.
6) Continuation, change, end, or referral
After evaluation, the chaplain determines whether to continue, change, end, or make a referral for care. Arising from the above, it is clear that chaplaincy has clinical care procedure. It is from these that quacks can be identified and a chaplain charged for the negligence of professional duty as well as incompetence. This is what has made chaplaincy care professional and clinical.
No wonder the globally accepted education curriculum is Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). Chaplains are very particular about curriculum and pedagogy/andragogy of chaplaincy. Chaplaincy is unlimited and inexhaustible.