Health care chaplaincy as a research-informed profession: how we get there

Health care chaplaincy should become a research-informed profession in the next ten years. This article describes my rationale for this statement and outlines a plan for accomplishing it. This means that all professional health care chaplains will value the contributions that research can make to their ministry and some chaplains will be engaged in research that informs the profession. Becoming a research-informed profession does not mean losing our emphasis on compassion, faith, presence, self-awareness, or any of the other rich resources of our tradition. It does mean supplementing those resources with the information research provides. I conclude that the question that professional health care chaplains face is not whether to become a research-informed profession, but how to get there.