The Hospital Spiritual Care. Existing Practice, Experience and Expectations Illustrated by Examples of Chosen Prague Hospitals

The main goal of this diploma thesis is to reflect the hospital spiritual care in Czech Republic nowadays and to compare it with its beginnings. The theoretical part maintains holistic approach to human being and emphasizes spiritual needs as a basis for hospital spiritual care. It also gives an overview of recent forms of hospital spiritual care in Czech Republic. The research part examines the patients' opinions and experience of spiritual care during their stay in hospitals. Questionnaire-based survey was done in seven Prague hospitals with 237 patients (96 of them used the chaplain service, 141 did not). The short interviews with Prague chaplains and patients regarding spiritual care complete the work. Research findings result in non-answered (and maybe non-answerable) questions: Can hospital chaplains quit their church membership and affiliation and not to serve to the church evangelization Mission? Is it possible to be "a spiritual, but non religious" chaplain and not to lose the chaplain identity? Is it - in general - possible to distinguish "spirituality" from "religiosity"