2018; Volume 19, No 7, July
Introducing... GWish
Christina Puchalski, MD, FACP, FAAHPM, Professor of Medicine.
The IAHPC is delighted to welcome new Institution Members, and to introduce them to the membership. This month, we are pleased to tell you about GWish, the George Washington Institute for Spirituality & Health:
GWish Is Helping to Restore Spirituality to Health Care
The George Washington Institute for Spirituality & Health (GWish) was founded in May 2001 as a leading organization on education and clinical issues related to spirituality and health.
Under the direction of Founder and Director Dr. Christina M. Puchalski, GWish is changing the face of health care through innovative research and training programs for physicians and other members of the interdisciplinary health care team, including clergy and chaplains. Its ultimate goal — ‘to restore the heart and humanity to health care’ — is being pursued in myriad ways.
Care that aids patients & providers
The GWish mandate is four-fold:
1) Transform health care through evidenced-based research supporting the inclusion of interprofessional spiritual care in health care.
2) Sustain medical school curricular developments through the creation of national and international competencies.
3) Expand the interprofessional community of scholars in the U.S. and internationally.
4) Create compassionate and patient-centered health care environments that improve the quality of patient care, increase health care provider satisfaction with work, and reduce provider turnover, burnout, and medical errors.
7 achievements of special note
GWish has earned distinction as a national and international convener of interdisciplinary health care professionals from 48 U.S. states and 28 countries on seven out of eight continents. Examples of these achievements include:
- 80% of U.S. medical schools have incorporated spirituality and health into their curricula;
- National consensus-derived competencies in spiritual care have been used by AAMC and integrated into medical school curricula, helping to redefine the meaning of professional development in health care;
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GWish-led national and international consensus conferences resulted in developing a model of interprofessional spiritual care, standards and implementation strategies that have been recognized and used by WHO, ASCO, IOM, the Dying in America report, EAPC, AAHPM, NHPCO, and The Vatican, among others;
- A Spiritual History Tool — Faith/Beliefs, Importance, Community, Addressed in Care or Action (FICA) — is widely used in clinical settings;
- Reflection is recognized as integral to personal and professional development of clinicians due to successful pilot implementations through the GWish-Templeton Reflection Rounds (GTRR);
- Two consensus conferences — in the U.S. (2013) and Geneva (2014) — culminated in the call for a global movement led by Global Network for Spirituality and Health (GNSAH), housed at GWish, with the shared commitment of further building the evidence base for spiritual care as a fundamental component of high-quality compassionate health care;
- GWish has developed an Interprofessional spiritual care training program, Interprofessional Spiritual Care Education Curriculum (ISPEC). ISPEC is the first program developed at the global level that offers a theoretically and research-grounded curriculum for teaching interprofessional spiritual care. Curricular development forms the basis of a train-the-trainer program to build leaders, consultants, advocates, and knowledgeable clinicians who can educate, empower, and guide other health care professionals at their institute in the integration of spirituality in health care.
‘Historically,’ writes Dr. Puchalski, ‘health care in the United States was founded on spiritual values — service, altruism, and compassionate care of those in need and those who suffer. Over the last 60 years, medicine and health care have been challenged by the tremendous explosion of technological advances and by the reality of increasing costs. These challenges have overshadowed the primary mission...to serve the whole person with care and compassion.’
GWish aims to restore the balance.