Measuring the impact of a pastoral care intervention to increase referrals and improve the quality of chaplain documentation in patient records.

Abstract

The complexity of patient care demands that health care teams collaborate effectively. This means that when pastoral care staff engage with patients, they need to communicate their findings to other members of the multidisciplinary team to maximize patient benefits. In 2016, an Australian hospital found that pastoral care staff were able to visit only 30% of admitted patients, and that documentation of pastoral care visits was minimal. This paper describes and measures the impact of a quality improvement education program for pastoral care workers by auditing patient medical records pre- and post-intervention. The intervention did not significantly increase the number of pastoral care visits or referrals. Documentation of pastoral care visits was significantly improved in terms of the detail provided. More work is required to standardize indications for pastoral care referral and templates for pastoral documentation in patient medical records.