Some effects of clinical pastoral education on a group of theological students and pastors

• Main Author: Swanson, Paul Reginald
• Language: en_US
• Published: Boston University 2018
• Subjects: Pastoral education; Religious education
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/2144/28163

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. === It was the aim of this dissertation to study the change which takes place in students in twelve weeks of clinical pastoral education. More specifically, it was an exploratory study attempting to develop a methodology to evaluate change in one group of thirteen students in the Institute of Pastoral Care program at Massachusetts General Hospital and to discover the empirical relationships among the personality and behavioral variables being measured. This change was defined and examined in terms of the following questions: (1) During the intensive twelve-week period of clinical pastoral education do changes occur in the students with respect to the following four areas: (a) scores on personality tests and behavioral rating sca.les, (b) self-insight, (c) patient impact, and (d) insight into patient impact? (2) If changes do occur in any of these four areas, can these changes be shown to be correlated with behavior in the other areas? For example, is change in patient impact positively or negatively correlated with self-insight?) (3) Is the type of impact which a clinical pastoral education student makes upon hospital patients correlated with any of the following four areas: (a) scores on personality tests and behavioral rating scales, (b) self-insight, (c) individual variables of impact, end (d) insight into impact on patients? This study was directly related to the underlying philosophy, methods, end goals of clinical pastoral education. One of the problems which has hampered clinical pastoral education in the past has been the lack of respectable measures to evaluate what takes place in, or the degree of success of, a twelve-week training period or program. There has been a question as to whether or not the methods of a clinical training program lead toward the realization of its goals, and, therefore, whether or not the underlying educational theory is sound and realistic. There is a need for a methodology which meets the standards of the behavioral sciences. It was hoped that this study, though an exploratory one, might offer some leads and help in this area as its own methodology was developed and set forth. [TRUNCATED]