Compassion-Centered Spiritual Health for Faculty and Staff

Compassion-Centered Spiritual Health (CCSH) at Emory University was launched as a joint creation by Spiritual Health and the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics in 2018. The program enhances the practice of spiritual health through CCSH Interventions, which are a Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT)-based approach to support the practices of spiritual health clinicians. CBCT is a research-based contemplative program developed at Emory University in 2004. CCSH Interventions are provided by spiritual health clinicians across Emory's inpatient and outpatient facilities and beyond, and offer a method to alleviate distress in patients and families and to mitigate burnout in healthcare professionals. While the intervention will be required for some staff and provider populations, Spiritual Health proposes to pilot a voluntary systematic implementation of CCSH Interventions for Teams (CCSH-TI) to clinical research teams at Winship Cancer Institute. Clinical Research Coordinators (CRCs) experience significant emotional and spiritual burden through exposure to patients living with cancer and undergoing clinical trials for cancer treatment. As individuals and teams, CRCs face multiple work-related challenges known to cause distress, including experiences of secondary trauma, exposure to emotional and spiritual suffering of patients and families, and experiences of loss of patients. The researchers of this study hope that offering CCSH Interventions for Teams to CRCs will increase their resilience, wellbeing and compassion toward self and others, with a secondary benefit that burnout will be reduced. By conducting this pilot project, the researchers hope to gain a better understanding of how to optimally implement CCSH for CRC teams at the Winship Cancer Institute.

Previous research indicates that Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) improves empathic accuracy, enhances well-being, and attenuates the pro-inflammatory response to psychosocial stress. CBCT is a secularized compassion meditation program adapted from the Tibetan Buddhist mind training (lojong) tradition, and it may be an ideal addendum to the spiritual caregiving provided by Emory University hospital chaplains and chaplain residents to approximately 100,000 patients, staff, and faculty members each year.

With this in mind, The Emory University Spiritual Health department now incorporates CBCT into their training curriculum using a phased approach that began in Fall 2017. The Spiritual Health department also developed an adapted program based on CBCT principles that chaplains can then deliver to patients and staff, called Compassion-Centered Spiritual Health (CCSH). Spiritual Health proposes to pilot a systematic implementation of CCSH Interventions for Teams (CCSH-TI) to clinical research teams at the Winship Cancer Institute.

This is a randomized trial of CCSH Interventions for Teams versus a wait list control condition. CRC teams will be randomized to receive CCSH-TI during a first cohort or to a wait-list group that will receive CCSH-TI during the second cohort. CRCs (n = 93) will be randomized by team to receive CCSH Interventions for Teams either in the fall or in the spring. Participating CRCs will complete self-report measures at 4 timepoints throughout the year: (1) Prior to randomization, (2) immediately upon completion of CCSH Interventions for Teams for cohort 1 (3) prior to CCSH Interventions for Teams for cohort 2, and (4) immediately upon completion of CCSH Interventions for Teams for cohort 2.

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion Criteria:

* Emory staff, clinical research coordinators

Exclusion Criteria:

* None