Religious studies instructors and TAs are ideally positioned to equip future clinicians to offer person-centered care to patients from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds — yet applying scholarly expertise to clinical contexts requires additional support and resources. This workshop, a collaboration between the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding and the Institute for Spirituality and Health, addresses that need directly.
Drawing on Tanenbaum's Trigger Topics framework — which identifies areas where religion and spirituality most consequentially shape clinical decisions, including end-of-life care, treatment refusals, and ritual observance during hospitalization — participants will engage religiously diverse case studies and gain hands-on familiarity with free and low-cost teaching materials immediately applicable in undergraduate religious studies courses for pre-health students.