This article illuminates how a largely overlooked group of healthcare professionals—hospital chaplains—engage in listening, along with what they perceive it means to listen well. The analysis of data generated reveals that engaging in listening, and doing this well, is for chaplains about inhabiting a relational body that includes: (a) being at eye level in relation to the other person; (b) making eye contact with the other; (c) understanding emotions as embodied narrative plots; (d) being still; and (e) distancing themselves from religion. The article closes with some critical reflections on listening and preparing our bodies to listen well.
FairclothC.RittmanM.BoylsteinC.YoungM. & Van PuymbroeckM. (2004). Energizing the ordinary: Biographical work and the future in stroke recovery narratives. Journal of Aging Studies, 18, 399–413.
5.
FrankA. W. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
6.
FrankA. W. (2004). The renewal of generosity: Illness, medicine and how to live. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
7.
FrankA. W. (2005). Generosity, care, and a narrative interest in pain. In CarrD.LoeserJ. & MorrisD. (Eds.), Narrative, Pain, and Suffering (vol. 34; pp. 289–300). Seattle, WA: IASP Press.
8.
FrankA. W. (2007). Five dramas of illness. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 50, 379–394.
9.
GergenK. (2009). Relational being: Beyond self and community. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
HalpernJ. (1996). Empathy: Using resonance emotions in the service of curiosity. In SpiroH.M.CurnenMcCrea M.G.PeschelE. & St. JamesD. (Eds.), Empathy and the practice of medicine: Beyond pills and the scalpel (pp. 160–173). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
12.
JacksonS. W. (1992). The listening healer in the history of psychological healing. American Journal of Psychiatry, 149(12), 1623–1632.
13.
JacobsonN. (2009). Dignity violation in healthcare. Qualitative Health Research, 19(11), 1536–1547.
14.
KalizkusV. & MatthiessenP. F. (2009). Narrative-based medicine: Potential, pitfalls, and practice. The Permanente Journal, 13(1), 80–85.
15.
KoenigH. G. (2005). Faith and mental health: Religious resources for healing. Philadelphia and London: Templeton Foundation Press.
MacDonaldK. (2009) Patient-clinician eye contact: Social neuroscience and the art of clinical engagement. Postgraduate Medicine, 121(4), 1–9.
19.
MacKenzieC. (2006). Imagining other lives. Philosophical Papers, 35(3), 293–325.
20.
MaykutP. & MorehouseR. (1994). Beginning qualitative research: A philosophic and practical guide. London, UK: The Falmer Press.
21.
NorwoodF. (2006). The ambivalent chaplain: Negotiating structural and ideological difference on the margins of modern day hospital medicine. Medical Anthropology, 25(1), 1–29.
22.
ProppK. M.ApkarJ.FordZabava W. S.WallaceN.SerbenskiM. & HofmeisterN. (2010). Meeting the complex needs of the health care team: Identification of nurse-team communication practices perceived to enhance patient outcomes. Qualitative Health Research, 20(1), 15–28.
23.
SarbinT. (2001). Embodiment and the narrative structure of emotional life. Narrative Inquiry, 11(1), 217–225.
24.
SmithB. (2008). Imagining being disabled through playing sport: The body and alterity as limits to imagining others' live. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2(2), 142–157.
25.
SmithB. & SparkesA. (2008). Changing bodies, changing narratives and the consequences of tellability: A case study of becoming disabled through sport. Sociology of Health and Illness, 30, 217–236.
26.
SmithB. & SparkesA. (2010). Exploring multiple responses to a chaos narrative. Health, 15(1), 38–53.
27.
ShillingC. (2005). The body in culture, technology and society. London, UK: Sage.
28.
VandeCreekL. (1999). Professional chaplaincy: An absent profession?Journal of Pastoral Care, 53(4), 417–432.
