Over the last decade, empirical research on compassion has burgeoned in the biomedical, clinical, translational, and foundational sciences. Increasingly sophisticated understandings and measures of compassion continue to emerge from the abundance of multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary studies. Naturally, the diversity of research methods and theoretical frameworks employed presents a significant challenge to consensus and synthesis of this knowledge. To bring the empirical findings of separate and sometimes siloed disciplines into conversation with one another requires an examination of their disparate assumptions about what compassion is and how it can be known. Here, we present an integrated theoretical review of methodologies used in the empirical study of compassion. Our goal is to highlight the distinguishing features of each of these ways of knowing compassion, as well as the strengths and limitations of applying them to specific research questions. We hope this will provide useful tools for selecting methods that are tailored to explicit objectives (methods matching), taking advantage of methodological complementarity across disciplines (methods mixing), and incorporating the empirical study of compassion into fields in which it may be missing.

Anxiety is prevalent among hospital inpatients and it has harmful effects on patient well-being and clinical outcomes. We aimed to characterize the sources of hospital distress and their relationship to anxiety. We conducted a cross-sectional study of inpatients (n = 271) throughout two Southeastern U.S. metropolitan hospitals. Participants completed a survey to identify which of 38 stressors they were experiencing. They also completed the State Trait Anxiety Inventory six-item scale. We evaluated the prevalence of stressors, their distribution, and crude association with anxiety. We then used multivariate logistic regression to estimate the association between stressors and clinically relevant anxiety, with and without adjusting for demographic variables. We used factor analysis to describe the interrelationships among stressors and to examine whether groups of stressors tend to be endorsed together. The following stressors were highly endorsed across all unit types: pain, being unable to sleep, feelings of frustration, being overwhelmed, and fear of the unknown. Stressors relating to isolation/meaninglessness and fear/frustration tend to be endorsed together. Stressors were more frequently endorsed by younger, female, and uninsured or Medicaid-insured patients and being female and uninsured was associated with anxiety in bivariate analysis. After controlling for the sources of distress in multivariate linear analysis, gender and insurance status no longer predicted anxiety. Feelings of isolation, lack of meaning, frustration, fear, or a loss of control were predictive. Study results suggest that multiple stressors are prevalent among hospital inpatients and relatively consistent across hospital unit and disease type. Interventions for anxiety or emotional/spiritual burden may be best targeted to stressors that are frequently endorsed or associated with anxiety, especially among young and female patients.

This article invites theological school educators, clinical pastoral education educators, representatives of the professional healthcare chaplaincy organizations, and social scientists to begin a shared conversation about chaplaincy education. To date, we find that theological educators, clinical educators, professional chaplains, and the healthcare organizations where they work are not operating from or educating toward a common understanding of what makes healthcare chaplains effective. Before we identify five key questions that might help us be in shared conversation and move towards educating the most effective chaplains, we briefly describe the history of education for healthcare chaplaincy. We then describe what we learned in interviews in 2018 with 21 theological and 19 clinical educators who are educating healthcare chaplains in theological schools and clinical pastoral education residency programs, year-long educational programs in hospitals and other settings that focus on preparing people for staff chaplain jobs. Their different approaches and frames inform the five questions with which we conclude.