Resilience and Spirituality in the Conduct of “Caretakers”: Role and Relationships in Professional and Volunteer Spiritual Care

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Eberhard Hauschildt
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 348851031

The project analyzes group discussions with health care professionals, hospital chaplains and volunteer care givers (here subsumed under the term "caretaker"). The project explores how humans in the role of caretaker share and interpret their – potentially spiritual / religious – interactions with patients in terms of resilience narratives. The project analyzes 10 group discussions, employing the “documentary method” according to Ralf Bohnsack, and aims to develop a typology. The theory perspective is that of practical theology / poimenics of Spiritual care. The broader resilience research group of which this project is a part will develop an improved theory of resilience and its terminological specifications, including aspects of religion and spirituality as well as developing ways to improve practice. Specifically, the caretaker project will help to clarify which points of the understanding of resilience - i.e. as developed through the resilience umbrella project - are in line with typical experiences and interpretations of various hospital practitioners and where the new understanding leads to challenges for the caretakers in their work.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2686: Resilience in Religion and Spirituality. Endurance and the Formation of Powerlessness, Fear and Anxiety
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Claudia Schulz