Patients under hospice and palliative care need four types of care when approaching to the ends of life. The four types of care refer to care for patients, care for patients’ family, persistent care during the whole hospice process, and a team approach to care. To be more specific, care for patients focuses not only on patients’ medical treatment but on their emotional and spiritual needs, and a team approach to care indicates that hospice care is provided by medical teams as well as patients’ family. In addition to doctors and nurses, medical teams also include professional chaplains who provide spiritual supports to satisfy patients’ spiritual and religious needs. Because Buddhism is widely spread and accepted in Chinese culture, Buddhist chaplains are eligible to provide patients with spiritual care in clinical medicine. This study, whose research subjects are clinical Buddhist chaplains, is based on qualitative research design, and its data was collected from semistructured interviews. The data is analyzed with content analysis. The result indicates: 1. Flexibility of Buddha dharma. Clinical Buddhist chaplains are adept at providing patients with spiritual care by using the fundamental theorem of Buddhism, the teaching of Buddha, and empathy and compassion. Clinical Buddhist chaplains adopted various methods to the same goal, which is to provide good and peaceful death for patients. 2. The methods clinical Buddhist chaplains adopted include: (1) Companionship and empathy to calm patients down. (2) Positive thinking toward life and death. (3) To understand patients’ thoughts and to help achieve their wishes. (4) To guide patients to the ends of life by using appropriate metaphors. By talking to patients, clinical chaplains provide professional and persistent patient-oriented care to meet patients’ needs. Clinical chaplains understand patients’ thoughts and relieve confusion among hospice patients when they face their final destinations of life. Clinical chaplains themselves are a kind of vessel. With interviews, clinical observations, and other methods, this study shows the specific process of how clinical chaplains apply their wisdom of religion on hospice and palliative care.
