Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 10, 2026

Using Visual and Narrative Methods to Achieve Fair Process in Clinical Care
Published on: February 17, 2011
What Motivates Healthcare Professionals' Referrals to Chaplains, and How to Help Them Formulate Referrals that
Emmanuelle Poncin1, Brigitte Niquille2, Guy Jobin3
1Platform MS3 - Medicine, Spirituality, Healthcare and Society, CHUV, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Abstract:
As many hospitals lack standardized referral protocols for spiritual care, healthcare professionals' perceptions and preferences play an important role in their decisions to refer patients to chaplains. To better understand what motivates these professionals to refer patients and how they approach spiritual care, this article examines referral requests from twelve healthcare professionals to a chaplain at the Lausanne University Hospital Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine. Comparative discourse analysis highlights that requests are largely driven by difficulties in patient-professional relationships. Yet, further interviews reveal that healthcare professionals construct spiritual care as a way to access patients' sense of identity and explore the meaning they give to their lives and experiences, for the benefit of both patients and professionals. The discussion considers how chaplains could help healthcare colleagues formulate referrals that accurately reflect patients' spiritual needs, thus improving the relevance and quality of spiritual care.
Related Concept Videos
Techniques of therapeutic communication I: Active Listening, Sharing Observations, Validation, and Using Touch
Therapeutic communication is not the same as social interaction. Social interaction has no goal or purpose and consists of casual information sharing, whereas therapeutic communication has a plan or purpose for the conversation. Therapeutic...
Techniques of Therapeutic Communication II: Focusing, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
This therapeutic technique can also be used when a patient brings up pertinent information during a health-related conversation. The...
Nursing Ethical Principles II
Consider the following scenario, which illustrates how these principles are applied in the care of Mr. John, a fifty-year-old teacher diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer.
Initially, Mr. John's cancer...
Ethical Issues
Ethical Concerns in Healthcare:
Ethical Dilemmas II
Stress Prevention and Stress Management Techniques VI
Motivation and Self-Determination
Motivation, the driving force behind behavior, plays a pivotal role at every stage of the change process. The research...

