Post-Graduate Certificate in Psychospiritual Care 2023-24

Applications closed 18th July for the 2023-24 Post-Graduate Certificate in Psychospiriual Care, a level 7 (6- credit) course taught by clinicians and academics from Oxford Health NHS Trust and Oxford Brookes University and open to all health, mental health, social and allied health professionals from any faith or none.

Background

Healthcare workers responding to an OxCSWell survey across the Thames Valley felt that spiritual care was not just a core part of attending to the health of patients and service users, but an essential part of their own wellbeing as “whole persons”, supporting other whole persons through the healthcare system. The survey also revealed that the majority of healthcare professionals had received no training in spiritual care, and felt this was an important but missing part of their education and ongoing professional development.

This finding is consistent with the wider literature which shows that, although policy guidance may mention spiritual assessment and care as part of a person-centred approach to care, practitioners lack the confidence, pathways, and structural support to deliver spiritual care beyond what was described in our survey as “tokenistic” and “cursory”. A large part of this appears to be due to confusion about what exactly spiritual care is, and who should deliver it, beyond the role of specific spiritual care providers such as chaplains. Practitioners appear to feel anxious about crossing sensitive religious or professional boundaries, and lack supervision and guidance on “how to” respond to what has been described by international consensus as: “…a dynamic and intrinsic aspect of humanity through which persons seek ultimate meaning, purpose, and transcendence, and experience relationships to self, family, others, community, society, nature, and the significant or sacred. Spirituality is expressed through beliefs, values, traditions, and practices.”

We are clear, therefore, that there is a clear and expressed need for training in psycho-spiritual care, and this has been borne out by the positive feedback received from our first two cohorts of students in 2021-22 and 2022-23.

“This unique interdisciplinary course has empowered us, as clinical and pastoral professionals, to discover spirituality at the live interface between clinical disciplines, scientific research, and pastoral vocation.”

— Student from 2021-2

Arising during the Covid-19 pandemic

‘The impact of the Covid 19 pandemic on individuals and on wider community and society has shown us (if any further proof were needed) just how important the spiritual and the psychosocial dimensions of healthcare are to so many people. Extraordinarily the subject is all too rarely addressed head-on in professional education. I am delighted that the introduction of this course – the first of its kind in the UK for health and social care professionals – will begin to address that gap.’

— Stuart Bell CBE (former OHFT NHS Chief Exec)

In the pandemic, death, dying and bereavement, issues of staffing and inequality as well as family pressures, put frontline staff under extreme and sustained stress from both direct traumatic experience and secondary pressures compounded by exhaustion. Interventions tended to focus on the ‘psycho-social’ fallout from the pandemic, making no mention of ‘psycho-spiritual’ effects, which we define as ‘the moral, ethical, existential and meaning-based impact’ of the pandemic on staff.

Our Post-Graduate Certificate in Psychospiritual Care is (as far as we know) the only dedicated programme in the UK which supports practitioners from across the health, mental health and social care system to deliver high quality, socially and culturally informed psycho-spiritual care. With teaching from academics and practitioners from fields across the lifespan representing the importance of psychospiritual wellbeing from cradle to grave, this course aims to bridge the gap between care disciplines to present a vision of wellbeing, enriched by a synthesis of psychological and spiritual approaches.

The programme supports the development of a holistic and inclusive cross-disciplinary approach to health and social care whereby practitioners are confident to work collaboratively to understand the complex, significant relationships between their patients’ and clients’ medical, therapeutic and spiritual requirements. The course encourages the development of practitioners’ own personal psychospiritual awareness and wellbeing, which is absolutely vital for the delivery of whole-person care.

Participants will gain a level 7 qualification with 60 credits at Masters level.