CBCT for Spiritual Health Clinicians

Based on a wealth of research demonstrating the associations between physical health and psychosocial well-being, modern health care in the United States is characterized by an increasingly patient-centered model of care that places a premium on the holistic treatment of the patient as a physical, psychosocial, and spiritual whole. Hospital chaplains play a vital role in delivering emotional and spiritual care to a broad range of both religious and non-religious patients for a wide variety of stressors, and extensive research indicates that spiritual consults impact patient outcomes and satisfaction. However, there is remarkably little research on the "active ingredients" of chaplaincy spiritual care, and a subsequent lack of standardization and best-practice guidelines informing chaplain training and chaplain spiritual consulting. CBCT ® (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training) is a secularized compassion meditation program adapted from the Tibetan Buddhist mind training (lojong) tradition, and it may be an ideal addendum to both chaplain training programs and to the spiritual care consults provided by Emory University hospital chaplains to approximately 100,000 patients each year. This is a pilot study to explore the feasibility and impact of incorporating CBCT into the educational curriculum for chaplain residents. To this end, the researchers will (1) examine the impact of CBCT on burnout, compassion, and empathic accuracy among chaplains in training, (2) explore whether the impact persists through the end of the resident training, (3) evaluate the timing of the training within the existing curriculum to maximize its impact, (4) evaluate whether CBCT-informed interventions improve patient outcomes, and (5) explore chaplain and patient mediators of the impact of spiritual care consults on patient outcomes. Data acquired in this pilot study will be used to estimate efficacy and to inform a randomized controlled trial.