ACPE Research Network

The ACPE Research Network seeks to foster connections among members of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education interested in research, encourage original research, and raise awareness about published research (e.g., in the health care literature and the education literature) related to spirituality, pastoral care, and Clinical Pastoral Education.

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS (updated May 15, 2012):

RECENT:

Please support the Research Network by using our Membership Form.

The fifteenth annual Spirituality Research Symposium at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) will be held on June 13, 2012, exploring Spirituality & Palliative Care. Event information is available on the Penn Medicine Department of Pastoral Care website. A flyer is also available. Featured speakers include Tracy Balboni, MD, MPH, and Michael Balboni, MDiv, ThD, PhD, from Harvard's Center for Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care Research (--see a select bibliography).

The May Article-of-the-Month explores "Sacred Healing Stories Told at the End of Life," as elicited and honored by a method that entails Presence, Active Listening, Touch. Also, note: The April AoM addresses educating chaplains for research literacy, reporting a national survey of CPE residency programs. This study formed the basis of the workshop on Teaching Research in CPE Residency Programs at the February 2012 ACPE conference in Alexandria, VA. (Slides from that workshop may be downloaded as PowerPoint or PDF files, along with a handout.)

The Winter 2012 Newsletter is now posted and includes reports of workshops from the national ACPE conference, updates on activity at several centers, and notices of books and articles. The Fall 2011 issue includes a note of four recent overviews and evaluations of measures of spirituality, which give a picture of a good menu of instrument options for research.

The Knowledge Base of Samples from the Spiritual Care Initiative for Professional Excellence [formerly the Ideal Intervention Paper (IIP) Project] has been updated (May 12, 2012) and now contains 340 summaries of reports in 25 categories ("CPE Supervisory Issues" recently added). See also John Gleason's latest e-Newsletter about the project, available as a PDF or Word file.

CONTINUING:

George Fitchett (Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL) and colleagues are interested in learning more about the curricula of ACPE-accredited centers that include teaching about research in the residency programs. If you include such teaching in your program please e-mail him at george_fitchett@rush.edu or call 312-563-4801.

The latest annotated bibliography of Medline-indexed articles on spirituality & health, from the Pastoral Care Department at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, is available as a searchable PDF via www.uphs.upenn.edu/pastoral/resed/bibindex.html. The bibliography for articles published during 2010 includes 321 entries.

HealthCare Chaplaincy (New York) has posted on its website (www.healthcarechaplaincy.org) the first five bibliographies in its Practical Bearings series --critical reviews of important books, articles and other publications on the theory and practice of pastoral care. "The Management of Care: Literature on Leadership and Organizational Development," "Discerning Patient Needs: Spiritual Assessment," "Meeting the Other: Interreligious Encounters in the Provision and Supervision of Spiritual Care," "To Want to Learn: Educational Theory for Supervision and Training," and "By Its Fruits: The Science of Health Care Chaplaincy," can be downloaded via www.healthcarechaplaincy.org/chaplaincy-research-resources/practical-bearings.html. Future issues planned for the coming months include: "Ministry Amidst Chance, Necessity, Love: Cancer and Health Care Chaplaincy," and "The Comfort of Strangers: Trends in the History and Current Practice of Health Care." Rev. Dr. Leonard Hummel, Professor of Pastoral Theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, and Visiting Scholar with HealthCare Chaplaincy, spoke about these bibliographies at our October 2008 Network meeting; and he is quoted on the project website: "Practical Bearings will point professional chaplains to resources that will help them fulfill their mission in the evolving and complex world of health care." These bibliographies are not restricted to research materials, but they should be broadly valuable.

The Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy is soliciting original research papers and literature reviews on topics of interest to chaplaincy. Full-length reports and brief reports of research may be submitted. All manuscripts should be in APA style and will be peer-reviewed. Please send manuscripts to KFlannelly@healthcarechaplaincy.org. For more on the journal, see our Spring-Summer 2009 Newsletter (§6).

The Fetzer Institute (www.fetzer.org) has revised its website, and the link for its Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality for Use in Health Care Research has been changed (to www.fetzer.org/images/stories/pdf/MultidimensionalBooklet.pdf). Note that the new online PDF does not contain the cover, title page, preface, and table of contents, which includes the booklet's statement that the publication "may be used and reprinted without special permission." All links on our Network pages have been changed to reflect this new address. See especially the Articles-of-the-Month for January 2004, January 2009, and April 2003.

Internet addresses often change, and one of the challenges of maintaining a site like ours is to keep all of the links on our many pages updated. Members, please e-mail john.ehman@uphs.upenn.edu if you encounter difficulties with linked sites.

If you are a first-time visitor, please also note:

This web site became operational on September 1, 2002. It will continue to evolve in response to suggestions from Network members. To submit suggestions, please directly e-mail the Network's convener at john.ehman@uphs.upenn.edu. All member correspondence is confirmed by return e-mail.

For the web site of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, click here.