Event Description
Robert Klitzman explores how patients and families struggle to make sense of serious disease and threats of death and other medical crises, seeking hope, purpose and larger connections beyond themselves. Physicians and other clinical staff are frequently uncomfortable with these issues, and chaplains have been filling the void, developing valuable approaches and insights. Most Americans will live out their final years in hospitals or nursing homes, and face existential and spiritual quandaries. Many of their prior religious and spiritual beliefs will fall short, and chaplains will often be the ones to assist, partly by reframing narratives and understandings of illness and spirituality. Yet people often know little, if anything, about these professionals. Klitzman presents stories about the spiritual lives of patients and explores the role of chaplains—who they are, what they do and the challenges they face.
Event Speaker
Robert Klitzman, Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. For more information, please visit the event webpage or contact [email protected].
Hosted by the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia University.
