With COVID-19 Patients in the Hospital Wards: The Experience of Iranian Clergy Visits

With the dramatic changes in crisis, it is essential to pay attention to spirituality in societies. When grief, illness, and mourning have become part of people s lives, the cleric can play an essential role in the healing process. This qualitative study shows a practice from the presence of Iranian clergy in hospitals in the Covid-19 epidemic. In these semi-structured interviews, the focus was on the three main questions, What can I do for you as a cleric? , What do you want to talk about? and Could I answer your questions, or do we need to meet again? . Each of the reports was considered a unit of analysis, and after reading them several times, the codes were extracted, and then the codes were categorized, and the main themes were formed. The three main themes are the joy of talking to a cleric, asking religiousspiritual questions, and psycho-socio-economic concerns. The process of empathy formed by the presence of clergy in the Hospital increases the connection of people with spirituality, leading to a sense of peace in the patients and in the treatment atmosphere.