Dogma and Legal Principles of Implementation of Pastoral Care in the Field of Health Care

The article is devoted to the understanding of the dogma of pastoral care in the field of health care and the current state of legal support for the activities of medical chaplains/chaplains in health care as subjects of pastoral care of patients, their relatives, volunteers and staff of health care institutions authorized by religious denominations. Medical chaplaincy is a special vocation of a priest as a harbinger of good news, a healer of spiritual wounds, and a good Samaritan who gives people consolation and comfort. Sacrificial pastoral service is a religious and existential dialogue of a medical chaplain with a sick/suffering person or other person who, while staying in a health care facility, acutely feels the need for safety, care, kindness, respect It has been established that the pastoral interaction between a medical chaplain and a patient is traditionally carried out in an equal format. The prospect of legalizing pastoral care in the field of health care, institutionalizing the pastoral training of chaplains and improving spiritual care consists in the legal establishment of the legal status of a medical chaplain, the formal definition of the principles of state-church and inter-denominational cooperation on pastoral care, and the development of unified moral and ethical imperatives of pastoral care.

A strategic priority is to create an appropriate legal basis for the involvement of a chaplain in health care to overcome stigmatizing patterns, to provide psychological assistance as part of a multidisciplinary rehabilitation team. In general, in the future, it should be about establishing spiritual care in health care as an integral component of medical care and integrating certified clinician-chaplains as spiritual guardians into the professional teams of health care institutions.