Spiritual Needs & Pastoral Services

What do spiritual needs, health care, pastoral services, religious resources, statistics, and quantitative research methods have in common? Traditional literature in the pastoral care, counseling, and education movement probably would say, ""Not a great deal."" Indeed, the pastoral arts and sciences have tended to be high on art (especially praxis) but relatively low on science (especially quantitative research). That's too bad, claims Dr. Larry VandeCreek, who has gathered together a sample of previously published but widely scattered research reports which he hopes will inform hospital chaplains, congregational pastors, hospital personnel, and theological students on ways in which knowledge gained from carefully designed research can enhance their project of care. Selecting only quantitative research reports, the volume explores such topics as the role of spirituality in terminally ill hospitalized patients, the demonstrated helpfulness of prayer in health crisis, the possible impact of hope among women with breast cancer, the role and impact of chaplaincy services in general hospitals, as well as other studies demonstrating a variety of relationships between spirituality and health care. Larry VandeCreek, Assistant Director of Pastoral Care and Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and in the Department of Neurology at the Ohio State University, has won many research awards, including the prestigious Association for Clinical Pastoral Education's ""Researcher of the Year"" award. A member of the Editorial Committee of The Journal of Pastoral Care, he is the author of A Research Primer for Pastoral Care and Counseling (1998) and one of the co-authors of Research in Pastoral Care and Counseling: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches (1994), both JPCP books.