Facilitating the experience of beauty may enable hope to withstand the anguish caused by disease. This experience integrated the usual forms of psychological support to offer patients a form of expression and support during the course of their treatment.
The study proposed a number of potentially reproducible, practical parameters to consider in assessing the value of a program dedicated to AYA. These metrics were examined in terms of the activities of our Youth Project, and confirmed its efficacy. To be sustainable over time, AYA projects have to be accepted as a standard of care at the community and government levels.
If validated in further studies, these results support the notion that a patient with cancer's sense of hope is sensitive to the quality of relationships with caregivers. This may be important to health care organization and resource allocation.
Improvements are needed on several fronts to professionalize the pastoral care provided in hospitals and modernize the figure of the hospital chaplain. These improvements include better relations between modern chaplains and the hospital organization and scientific world; more focus on a scientific approach to their activities and on evaluating the efficacy of pastoral care activities; greater clarity in the definition of the goals, methods and procedures; the design of protocols and a stance on important ethical issues; respect for the various faiths, different cultures and both religious and nonreligious or secularized customs; greater involvement in the multidisciplinary patient care teams, of which the hospital chaplains are an integral part; stronger integration with public health operators and cooperation with the psychosocial professions; specific training on pastoral care and professional certification of chaplains; and the development of shared ethical codes for the profession.
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