Do Not Forget the Spirit: Exploring pastoral care pedagogies in medical education

In the vulnerable space of illness, the fickle and often ill-defined patient-physician relationship is an integral pillar of the healthcare experience. Recognizing that the spiritual care dimension of medical care and education has long been overlooked, Do Not Forget the Spirit explores how components of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), an interfaith professional education that trains hospital chaplains and ministers to care for people in crisis, are valuable and viable pedagogies for the education of physicians and other medical professionals. Drawing on autoethnographic experience as a chaplain intern, interviews with healthcare professionals, and emerging literature, this paper offers programmatic suggestions for integrating chaplain shadowing and CPE-style educational opportunities into existing medical curricula. Not only do these interventions have the potential to foster more cohesive interprofessional patient care, but they also encourage medical students to turn inward and contemplate the humanistic aspects of healing.