Values in Care

    Chaplain & Spiritual Care

    Support meaning, worldview, faith, and values across healthcare decisions without treating tradition as a substitute for asking the individual.

    See your starting page

    A smaller set of paths for this role.

    These are navigation choices, not assumptions about what every person in this role needs.

    Selected material

    Spiritual Care with Muslim Patients in Hospice and Palliative Settings

    Guidance for chaplains and spiritual care providers on assessing and addressing spiritual distress, ritual needs, and family dynamics in Muslim patients.

    • Use structured spiritual assessment tools to explore meaning, connectedness, and transcendence in ways that resonate with Islamic narratives.
    • Normalize common themes such as viewing illness as a test, concerns about past sins, and fears of dying without proper rituals; integrate Qur'anic resources and du'a as appropriate.
    • Clarify role boundaries when a non-Muslim chaplain is involved, including when to defer ritual leadership to imams or Muslim volunteers while still offering presence and advocacy.
    • Support families in coordinating Shahada recitation, Qur'an playback, and Qiblah orientation, working with nursing staff to minimize avoidable disruptions near the time of death.
    • Attend to staff moral distress and cross-cultural conflicts through debriefings and ethics consultation when needed.

    Interfaith Chaplaincy in Hospice and Palliative Care

    Overview of interfaith chaplaincy models, competencies, and case-based approaches to supporting patients of multiple traditions.

    • Interfaith chaplains often navigate cases where formal religious affiliation differs from lived practice; assessment should focus on personal meanings, rituals, and communities rather than labels.
    • EAPC competencies call for chaplains to support team-based spiritual care, provide education, and contribute to organizational policies on spiritual care quality indicators.
    • Case studies of Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and secular patients illustrate that a 'good death' is understood in tradition-specific and person-specific ways, requiring flexible, narrative-based interventions.

    Values in Care uses audience views to reduce navigation load. They do not change the evidence standard or infer an individual's preferences.