All of Me: Patient-Centered Spirituality for Holistic Caregiving

All of Me illuminates how chaplains, hospital caregivers, and clergy can provide spiritual care for those who are sick, in hospitals, preparing for surgery, or recovering. Based on interviews with forty hospital and ER patients about their experiences, lessons learned, and insights gained while receiving care, Boursier weaves these accounts together with interdisciplinary literature from medical and social sciences, ethics, philosophy, spirituality, theology, and religious studies. The result is a resource that offers both insight and practical tools for practitioners and students, showing how spiritually informed compassionate care can be cultivated through identifying, respecting, and supporting spirituality to foster holistic patient well-being.

Rev. Dr. Helen T. Boursier, PhD, is a public theologian, educator, author, activist, ordained minister, and artist who advocates for justice. She teaches gender studies; spirituality through a justice-informed lens to nursing and social work students; theology; and religious studies at the College of St. Scholastica. An ordained Presbyterian minister, she was a volunteer chaplain with displaced migrants at the US-Mexico border (2014-2022). Her books include Desperately Seeking Asylum: Testimonies of Trauma, Courage, and Love (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); The Ethics of Hospitality: An Interfaith Response to U.S. Immigration Policies (Lexington Books, 2019); Art as Witness: A Practical Theology of Arts-Based Research (Lexington Books, 2021); Willful Ignorance: Overcoming the Limitations of (Christian) Love for Refugees Seeking Asylum (Lexington Books, 2022); and Precious Precarity: A Spirituality of Borders (2024).