Projects

DESCRIPTION

Knowing that resuscitation events (“codes”) are universal in healthcare and often stressful for healthcare teams, we partnered with the Methodist Code Blue Committee to develop this study exploring the impact of codes on individual healthcare clinicians, teams, and units. We gathered survey and interview responses from multidisciplinary healthcare professionals in our health system, including nurses, physicians, respiratory therapists, and pharmacists. Chaplains then led a multidisciplinary effort to better support healthcare teams. Using input from follow-up surveys and interviews about their code experiences and preferences for processing those experiences, we created the Post Code Debrief guide. To pilot our approach, we had a chaplain and a clinician co-lead a debrief addressing clinical and emotional aspects of the code in a brief, 10-minute post-code huddle on the unit.

AIMS

Our project is aimed to describe healthcare professionals’ code experiences, design an approach to staff support that is responsive to clinical flow, and promote clinician well-being.

RESOURCES

Chaplaincy Innovation Lab webinar: “Chaplain-Led Post-Traumatic Debriefs”
Script for Chaplain-Led Debrief Role Play
Chaplain-Led Post Code Debrief Tool
APC Workshop slides

To View other Resources Please Visit the Resources Page

DESCRIPTION

Faith leaders play foundational and diverse roles in the lives of their faith communities. They articulate a framework of belief and meaning that provides a foundation and context for their faith community members’ life experiences, values, and priorities. The goals of this project are to create a partnership between faith leaders and IU Health to enhance the care and health of faith leaders, faith community members and local communities. 

DESCRIPTION

The Evans Center meets bi-weekly to collaborate about the ongoing development of this research project. This research project is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of proactive, professional spiritual care for the family decision makers of critically ill patients in the Intensive Care Unit. Board eligible or board-certified chaplains provide spiritual care to family decision makers at pre-determined time intervals as part of the study. The intervention is based on the Evans Center approach to spiritual care called the Spiritual Care Assessment and Intervention (SCAI) Framework. This project is a close collaboration between the IU Health Academic Health Center (AHC) Department of Spiritual Care and Chaplaincy and the Indiana University Center for Aging Research(CAR) at the Regenstrief Institute, Inc.

The SCAI Framework was developed to balance the need for a reproducible research tool for spiritual care assessment and intervention, with an open, individually responsive approach to spiritual care that would feel authentic to chaplains, patients, and families. We have developed the SCAI framework through an interdisciplinary process involving chaplains, theologians, researchers, and other clinicians and revised it based on feedback over the years. Although it was developed for ICU family members, some questions have also been adapted for the clinical settings in which it was being used, such as the outpatient oncology clinic. As a result, you may notice small differences in versions of the framework that have been used overtime.

The SCAI Framework is registered under Creative Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You are welcome to use the materials posted here for your own clinical use or for research conducted by non-profit entities. For any other uses, contact Dr. Alexia Torke at the Evans Center.

DESCRIPTION

The Congregational Care Network (CCN) cooperates closely with area congregations to promote physical health and spiritual wellness to their members. The Evans Center is a partner in the project to help conduct evaluation of outcomes. The CCN partners with congregations in Marion and Monroe Counties to address social isolation. IU Health Chaplains and Social Workers identify patients 50 or older who have a chronic illness and live in the same community as the congregation, and offer that patient the opportunity to connect with a congregational volunteer who offers companionship as the patient adjusts to life at home following a hospital stay. Congregational volunteers are available for persons of all faiths and for those who do not identify with any particular faith or tradition.

DESCRIPTION

The Evans Center, in partnership with the Co-Directors of this new (2021) Scholarly Concentration offered by the IU School of Medicine, meets bi-weekly to collaborate on ideas for the development of this program. In the Religion and Spirituality Scholarly Concentration, medical students will be introduced to major spiritual traditions, spiritual concepts in health, and the ways they interact. These include religious traditions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism. These also include non-religious spiritual traditions such as feminist spirituality, western humanism, and secularism. Spiritual concepts include personhood, belief, hope, meaning-making, compassion, cure/healing, and suffering. Course sessions will be led by a spiritually diverse faculty, with discussion of spiritual traditions led by leaders within those traditions.  Phase One Year One began in June 2021.