The social relations of prayer in healthcare: Adding to nursing's equity-oriented professional practice and disciplinary knowledge.

Although spiritual practices such as prayer are engaged by many to support well-being and coping, little research has addressed nurses and prayer, whether for themselves or facilitating patients' use of prayer. We conducted a qualitative study to explore how prayer (as a proxy for spirituality and religion) is manifest-whether embraced, tolerated, or resisted-in healthcare, and how institutional and social contexts shape how prayer is understood and enacted. This paper analyzes interviews with 21 nurses in Vancouver and London as a subset of the larger study. Findings show that nurses' kindness can buffer the loneliness and exclusion of ill health and in this way support the "spirit" of those in their care. Spiritual support for patients rarely incorporated prayer, in part because of ambiguities about permission and professional boundaries. Nurses' engagement with prayer and spiritual support could become a politicized site of religious accommodation, where imposition, religious illiteracy, and racism could derail person-centered care and consequently enact social exclusion. Spiritual support (including prayer) sustained nurses themselves. We propose that nursing's equity-oriented knowledge encompass spirituality and religion as sites of exclusion and inclusion. Nurses must be supported to move past religious illiteracy to provide culturally and spiritually sensitive care with clarity about professional boundaries and collaborative models of spiritual care.

In plain view: Gender in the work of women healthcare chaplains.

In sociological studies of religion and chaplaincy, there is little research on how gender plays a role in structural inequalities and experiences of women chaplains. Through research on the work of women chaplains in public healthcare in Vancouver (Canada) and London (England) this qualitative study revealed that while they have opportunities for leadership and ministry in chaplaincy, they are often on the margins of the religious institutions they are affiliated with and the secular medical organisations that employ them. Simultaneously, they confront the social structuring of gender and race that can affect them being overlooked. By applying a lived religion and feminist intersectional analysis, this research focuses on an area of study that has received scant attention.

Dans les études sociologiques de la religion et de l'aumônerie, il y a peu de recherches sur la façon dont le genre joue un rôle dans les inégalités structurelles et les expériences des femmes aumônières. Grâce à une recherche sur le travail des femmes aumônières dans les services de santé publique à Vancouver (Canada) et à Londres (Angleterre), cette étude qualitative a révélé que si elles ont des possibilités de leadership et de ministère dans l'aumônerie, les femmes aumônières sont souvent en marge des institutions religieuses auxquelles elles sont affiliées et des organisations médicales laïques qui les emploient. Simultanément, elles se confrontent à la structuration sociale du genre et de la race qui peut les affecter en les laissant de côté. Grâce à une analyse de la religion vécue et à une analyse intersectionnelle féministe, cette recherche se concentre sur un domaine d'étude qui a reçu peu d'attention jusqu'ici.

'The Elephant on the Table': Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Home Health Services.

Healthcare services are increasingly being provided in the home. At the same time, these home contexts are changing as global migration has brought unprecedented diversity both in the recipients of care, and home health workers. In this paper, we present findings of a Canadian study that examined the negotiation of religious and ethnic plurality in home health. Qualitative analysis of the data from interviews and observations with 46 participants-clients, administrators, home healthcare workers-revealed how religion is expressed and 'managed' in home health services.

Exploring racism and racialization in the work of healthcare chaplains: a case for a critical multifaith approach.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has revealed healthcare settings as sites of much-needed scrutiny as to the workings of racism and racialization in shaping healthcare encounters, health outcomes, and workplace conditions. Little research has focused on how healthcare chaplains experience and respond to social processes of racism and racialization. We apply a critical race lens to understand racism and racialization in healthcare chaplaincy, and inspired by Patricia Hill Collins, propose a "critical multifaith approach." Drawing on research in healthcare in Canada and England, we generated four composite narratives to analyze racialization's variability and resistances employed by Indigenous, Arab, Black, and White chaplains. The composites disclose complex intersecting histories of colonialism, religion, race, and gender. Developing a critical multifaith perspective on healthcare delivery is an essential competency for chaplains wanting to impact the systems in which they serve in the direction of more equitable human flourishing.

Sacred spaces in public places: religious and spiritual plurality in health care.

Several intriguing developments mark the role and expression of religion and spirituality in society in recent years. In what were deemed secular societies, flows of increased sacralization (variously referred to as 'new', 'alternative', 'emergent' and 'progressive' spiritualities) and resurgent globalizing religions (sometimes with fundamentalist expressions) are resulting in unprecedented plurality. These shifts are occurring in conjunction with increasing ethnic diversity associated with global migration, as well as other axes of difference within contemporary society. Democratic secular nations such as Canada are challenged to achieve social cohesion in the face of growing religious, spiritual and ethnic diversity. These challenges are evident in the high-paced, demanding arena of Health care. Here, religious and spiritual plurality enter in, sometimes resulting in conflict between medical services and patients' beliefs, other times provoking uncertainties on the part of healthcare professionals about what to do with their own religiously or spiritually grounded values and beliefs. In this paper, we present selected findings from a 3-year study that examined the negotiation of religious and spiritual pluralism in Health care. Our focus is on the themes of 'sacred' and 'place', exploring how the sacred - that which is attributed as special and set apart as it pertains to the divine, transcendence, God or higher power - takes form in social and material spaces in hospitals.

Practicing the awareness of embodiment in qualitative health research: methodological reflections.

Although the importance of the researcher's embodiment has been noted in health and social sciences research, in many instances, more attention has been paid to the embodiment of the researched. Thus, more in-depth analysis of the embodied researcher can illuminate qualitative inquiry. The influence of the embodied researcher became visible in a recent critical ethnographic study examining the negotiation of religious, spiritual, and cultural plurality in health care. In this article, we do not present research findings per se, but rather methodological reflections. As researchers, we highlight emotional and bodily ways of knowing and experiences of difference such as culture, race, and religion as embodied and a part of researcher-participant encounters. We aim to elucidate the awareness of being embodied researchers, and with this elucidation, we consider implications for knowledge generation for health and social sciences.

Expressions of Prayer in Residential Care Homes.

Although the value of spiritual care in the care of older adults is supported by research, few studies have focused specifically on prayer in residential care settings. This ethnographic study with fifteen chaplains and administrators in eleven residential care homes involved analyses of walking interviews and research diaries. Findings revealed the spaces in which prayer happens and the forms it takes. The identities of chaplains-their own spiritual practices, religious beliefs, and positioning within the facility-shaped their dis/comfort with prayer and how they located prayer within public and private spaces. Where organizational leadership endorsed the legitimacy of chaplaincy services, prayer was more likely to be offered. Even in these circumstances, however, religious diversity and questions about secularism left chaplains ambivalent about the appropriateness of prayer. The results demonstrate the relevance of religion and spirituality to residential care, and illustrate how prayer functions as an opportunity for connection and understanding.