The role of the clinical psychologist on a burn unit in a general teaching hospital

This paper reviews the core skills that a clinical psychologist brings to a burn unit and suggests a model for optimal psychological management of burn patients, families, and staff. Recovery from a burn injury involves three stages that comprise (a) acute treatment of severe medical complications, (b) adjustment to hospitalization, and (c) long-term rehabilitation. Each stage contains numerous issues that the clinical psychologist should monitor and manage. Assessment of patients at risk, early intervention, and specialist management are highlighted as critical components of effective psychological management of burn injury in a multidisciplinary team context.     

Pastoral care in a trauma center

The pastoral staff of the Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a vital participant in the advanced trauma-care team. The staff of professionally certified chaplains take an active role in ministering to the unique temporal, psychological, and spiritual needs of both patients and patients' families. These professionals serve as hosts, counselors, confidants, and friends to people who have been suddenly thrown into chaos. The pastoral staff at a trauma center also ministers to the emotional and spiritual needs of the various medical and nursing staffs.     

Pastoral counseling in a settled community

Much of the literature in pastoral counseling has been written against the backdrop of an anonymous, changing, technological, and urban community setting. The author contrasts the premium this understanding of counseling places on establishing relationships, confidentiality, gaining information through questions, and the long training required with the way these same matters may be understood from the vantage point of a more settled community, characterized by long-term relations, limited confidentiality, and the support lay persons give each other. He discusses the pastor's role change in this setting and describes an approach to training lay men and women to assume pastoral care responsibility.     

Pastoral theology in a pluralistic age

The article presents a theological and normative response to the question, “What is Pastoral Theology?”. The primary task is to bring together theological ethics and the social sciences to provide a normative vision of the human life cycle for a pluralistic setting with diverse religio-cultural assumptions. Introduces a clinical case to suggest the range of questions with which Pastoral Theology should be concerned and presents four propositions informed by a theological ethic and a dynamic perspective.     

Perspectives of a Pastoral Counselor

No abstract available for this article.     

Integrity in Pastoral Counseling

This essay suggests that pastoral counseling involves a spiritual and emotional quest for wholeness. The personal quest of the pastoral counselor has a parallel impact upon the quest of those who seek his or her counsel. The essay presents the view that faith must be established in the life of the pastoral counselor in at least four areas: in community, in the use of one's spiritual gifts, in the love of mercy and the doing of justice, and in communion with God.     

Pastoral excellence and Pastoral Theology: A slight shift of paradigm and a modest polemic

The existence of Pastoral Theology as a discipline is problematic. The possibility of becoming a discipline is discussed as requiring a shift from a clinical/therapeutic to an ecclesial paradigm as its center. The shift would foster a valuing of the pastor as an interpreter of human existence, attention to the need for a pastoral hermeneutic, and an appreciation for particularity. The field needs to attend its intellectual tasks and to assess the debits/credits of its relations to secular disciplines.     

Pastoral care in a time of global market capitalism

The author defines pastoral theology as "the study of the micro-world of intrapsychic and interpersonal interactions with the tools of theology and the social sciences for the purpose of support and healing. In a typical class or supervisory session, we analyze the words, voice inflection, pace, and gestures of an intimate conversation between two people, looking for clues to the deep structure of personality and intimate relationships. The hope of such study is that we will see the revelation of God is love and power in action to validate and challenge the theological traditions that give us eyes to see and invite us to see more clearly."     

Bioethics and Pastoral Concern: Some Possible New Directions in Pastoral Theology

This special issue of the journal is comprised of papers given at a conference in May 2011 at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston on the theme of “Social Justice and the Health Professions.” This article offers the following rationale for this special issue in particular and for pastoral theologians to contribute to bioethics in general: (1) two contemporary theological thinkers in bioethics, Karen Lebacqz and Lisa Cahill, argue that theological discussions of justice broaden and deepen discussions of justice in mainstream bioethics—thus the focus on social justice provides an area for interdisciplinary and intersectional work; (2) pastoral theologians have not, to a great extent, contributed to discussions of religion and bioethics—this has been the territory of theological ethicists, especially during the 1970s; (3) one influential pastoral theologian, Bonnie Miller-McLemore, has called for (a) a broader concern for health in pastoral theology beyond psychological health and (b) more disciplinary approaches within pastoral theology beyond psychology so as to attend to “the living human web”; and (4) one way to advance the theological contributions in bioethics is by inviting pastoral theologians to focus on matters of social justice (an established area of intersection) as identified by health professionals, thus providing (a) new areas for inquiry and (b) new theological perspectives in bioethics. This article also suggests that pastoral theologians can contribute to bioethics by focusing on both “macro” issues (issues relating to structures and groups) and “micro” issues (issues relating to persons and experiences) as a way of pursuing the topic of justice in bioethics. The bulk of this article focuses on “macro” issues, but, in closing, the author articulates how he has been addressing “micro” issues in his own work. The author argues that both of these approaches—“macro” and “micro”—are legitimate ways for pastoral theologians to express pastoral concerns in bioethics.     

Pastoral care in psychiatric crisis

Pastoral Psychology -