Center to Advance Palliative Care

Serving diverse religious traditions is, in our experience, much like serving diverse cultures. The starting point is to avoid making assumptions. Chaplains can elicit information about the individual's beliefs and how their current situation is perceived in reference to those beliefs. Then, the chaplain will be able to provide support based on the individual's point of view. We maintain a list of spiritual leaders and healers from the cultures we most often serve and assist in establishing contact with them if the patient is in agreement. Patients may sometimes be better served by someone from a different religion than by someone from a different branch of their own religion--an empathetic Buddist may be of more support than a medicine man from a different Native American tribe. Acceptance is crucial; exploring mysteries together has been more productive for us than having answers...