Chaplains model using spiritual tools to build community and caring in the most complex clinical settings.
Chaplain Leah Klug shares how she and her palliative care team quickly equipped clinicians within their healthcare system with the palliative care skills required to navigate the challenges associated with caring for a massive influx of dying patients throughout the COVID pandemic.
She also shares how her team works to help healthcare providers to develop rituals to grieve their losses, maintain their human dignity, and reaffirm their identity as healers in challenging circumstances.
Leah also discusses how a healthy team functioning benefits from a grounding in each team member’s spiritual tradition (whether mindfulness practice or rocking out to Meatloaf).
Finally, she shares her perspective on healthcare providers as “essential” humans whose clinicians and healthcare leaders must prioritize spiritual and emotional needs.
Bio: Leah Klug is a Seattle-based palliative care chaplain. She has spent her career as a spiritual care specialist helping to meet the spiritual needs of clinicians and patients within public sector healthcare systems.
Additional Resources:
Spiritual Care
Transforming Chaplaincy - Desjardins & Redl (2022):
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.transformchaplaincy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/eBook-final-22.2.27.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1655077157656000&usg=AOvVaw1gh-8ee_tItCIua8psA0ws
Moral Injury
APA Guidelines for Managing Moral Injury (2020): https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.psychiatry.org/File%2520Library/Psychiatrists/APA-Guidance-COVID-19-Moral-Injury.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1655077157657000&usg=AOvVaw1nOACskv_yOGT51YmRPE-F
Moral Injury in times of COVID-19- Williams, Brundage, & Williams (2020): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7195905/