• Elaine Wittenberg-Lyles, Debra Parker Oliver, George Demiris, Paula Baldwin, and Kelly Regehr.
• Department of Communication Studies, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203-5268, USA. lyles@unt.edu
• J Palliat Med. 2008 Dec 1;11(10):1330-5.

BackgroundHospice chaplains provide a specific expertise to patient and family care, however, individual roles and responsibilities that facilitate the interdisciplinary team environment are less well known.ObjectiveThe primary aim of this study was to investigate how hospice chaplains perceive their role in interdisciplinary team meetings and to what extent hospice chaplains share common experiences within the interdisciplinary team approach in hospice.MethodHospice chaplains within a 10-state region participated in a 39-item phone survey about professional roles, group roles, and structural characteristics that influence their ability to participate in interdisciplinary collaboration.ResultsFindings revealed that professional role conflict is experienced, primarily with social workers. Informal group task and maintenance roles included team spiritual care advisor and conflict manager, and structural characteristics consisted of extracurricular communication outside of the organization.ConclusionsAlthough chaplains foster interdisciplinary collaboration within the hospice team, future research needs to address improvements to the chaplain's role within the interdisciplinary team process.

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