Biography
Elaine Champagne is a full professor at Université Laval's Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, holder of the Religion, Spirituality and Health Chair. Her research focuses on spiritual accompaniment in healthcare settings, particularly in palliative and end-of-life care, and on spiritual accompaniment in pediatrics. She is currently developing an expertise in pain management that integrates the pharmaceutical and spiritual dimensions.
What excites you most about your research program or field?
Questions and issues concerning spirituality in the context of illness, suffering or the end of life are appearing more and more frequently in interdisciplinary health research. Many healthcare professionals are seeking to integrate them into the care they provide. Clinicians are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of spirituality on the well-being of sick people. In parallel, I’m often asked questions about spirituality, the way it relates to or differs from religion and ways of approaching it when values and beliefs are not necessarily shared. I’m also interested in spirituality in children, who, although they may not be able to conceptualize concepts of meaning usually associated with spirituality, nonetheless ask questions about life and their experience, and ‘inhabit’ their relationships with those around them.
Spirituality is indeed difficult to define – like the concepts of time or life. The language we use to talk about it is often pictorial: a path, an inner fire, a breath, a quest…I think it is possible to recognize the impact of spiritual life on people’s state of being, or at least on the way they deal with daily life and difficult situations. Spirituality can usually be seen as a (sometimes unrecognized) resource that people can rely on and that contributes profoundly to their quality of life. Spiritual care practitioners can help people recognize and draw on their intimate resources, whatever their religion. Sometimes, however, the spiritual life or life as a whole can be impacted. Thus, specialized spiritual support helps to encourage and facilitate the expression of this profound quest – relational and existential, in order to help unravel what obstructs and hinders it. Spiritual support can help sustain a deep-rooted sense of hope through active listening, compassionate presence and the process of storytelling (among others).
My research focuses on ways of recognizing spirituality and accompanying it, not only with words to frame or enclose it, but also with words to enable it to express itself and unfold. I am also passionate about interdisciplinary dialogue in healthcare, with the aim of highlighting the complementarity of anthropological and epistemological approaches to well-being of those who suffer.
