Healing or Hallucination?
This case study centers on a woman who describes a healing encounter with God as she nears the end of life. While the chaplain assesses her spiritual needs and considers a plan of care, a doctor dismisses this experience as a hallucination. Learners weigh multiple factors as they navigate the chaplain’s responsibilities to the patient and medical staff, their own reactions, and possible interventions in a fraught web of interpersonal dynamics.
As a result of this lesson, you will be able to:
- Analyze the varying interpersonal dilemmas provoked among the various stakeholders this case study, and their relational impact
- Engage the specific expertise and competencies you bring to this multidisciplinary team as a chaplain (critical use of knowledge in religious, psychological, and cultural studies)
- Propose ways to intervene, based on your expertise and positionality, which indicates attention to the intersectional aspects of self and others’ social identity
- Explore the relational impact your differing responses may have on the patient and your colleagues, using the understandings of self and spiritual differentiation
interpersonal skills and competencies
spiritual experience
hospital chaplaincy
care team
authority
identity
spiritual assessment
charting
self-awareness
This case study was developed by: Jawad Bayat (Penn Medicine Princeton House Behavioral Health), Katie Givens Kime (Odyssey Impact), Duane Bidwell (Claremont School of Theology at Willamette University), Lars Mackenzie, and Liz Aeschlimann.