CBCT for Spiritual Health Clinicians

Status:	Enrolling by invitation
Conditions:	Healthy Studies
Therapuetic Areas:	Other
Healthy:	No
Age Range:	Any
Updated:	3/16/2019
Start Date:	July 5, 2018
End Date:	July 2019

Exploring the Effect of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) on the Empathic Accuracy and Resilience of Spiritual Health Clinicians

The Emory University Spiritual Health department will incorporate Cognitively-Based
Compassion Training (CBCT) into their training curriculum beginning in Fall 2017, which
provides the opportunity to compare students receiving the CBCT addendum with those receiving
traditional chaplaincy training. This is a naturalistic study that examines the impact of
incorporating CBCT into Emory's spiritual caregiver training program. The researchers will
examine the effect of CBCT on empathic accuracy and resilience by comparing the first group
of students who receive CBCT-informed training with chaplains who receive standard training
in spiritual caregiving and receive CBCT later in the residency year. Comprehensive
assessments will be conducted in order to examine whether outcomes for patients are improved
for those receiving chaplain spiritual care augmented by CBCT compared to those receiving
spiritual care from chaplains who receive CBCT later in their residency.

Based on a wealth of research demonstrating the associations between physical health and
psychosocial well-being, modern health care in the United States is characterized by an
increasingly patient-centered model of care that places a premium on the holistic treatment
of the patient as a physical, psychosocial, and spiritual whole. Hospital chaplains play a
vital role in delivering emotional and spiritual care to a broad range of both religious and
non-religious patients for a wide variety of stressors, and extensive research indicates that
spiritual consults impact patient outcomes and satisfaction. However, there is remarkably
little research on the "active ingredients" of chaplaincy spiritual care, and a subsequent
lack of standardization and best-practice guidelines informing chaplain training and chaplain
spiritual consulting. CBCT ® (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training) is a secularized
compassion meditation program adapted from the Tibetan Buddhist mind training (lojong)
tradition, and it may be an ideal addendum to both chaplain training programs and to the
spiritual care consults provided by Emory University hospital chaplains to approximately
100,000 patients each year. This is a pilot study to explore the feasibility and impact of
incorporating CBCT into the educational curriculum for chaplain residents. To this end, the
researchers will (1) examine the impact of CBCT on burnout, compassion, and empathic accuracy
among chaplains in training, (2) explore whether the impact persists through the end of the
resident training, (3) evaluate the timing of the training within the existing curriculum to
maximize its impact, (4) evaluate whether CBCT-informed interventions improve patient
outcomes, and (5) explore chaplain and patient mediators of the impact of spiritual care
consults on patient outcomes. Data acquired in this pilot study will be used to estimate
efficacy and to inform a randomized controlled trial.

Inclusion Criteria for Chaplains:

- Chaplain residents with Spiritual Health at Emory Healthcare

Inclusion Criteria for Chaplains:

- Patient of Emory Healthcare

- Requested a spiritual health consultation with a hospital chaplain

Exclusion Criteria:

We found this trial at

sites

Emory University Hospital Midtown

550 Peachtree St NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30308

(404) 686-4411