When Vincent Bain receives his Master of Bioethics from Harvard Medical School in a few weeks, he will be headed to a new assignment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center—one of the few officers in the U.S. Army to serve as a chaplain bioethicist.
“The Harvard bioethics program gave me the opportunity to qualify for this unique slot,” said Bain, an Army major with 13 years’ experience in the military chaplaincy. His HMS capstone project went beyond the military framework. It focused on chaplain participation on health care ethics committees in hospital settings finding that chaplains are largely underutilized by hospitals in making bioethical decisions.
“Medical cases can be very complicated, with no case like another,” said Bain. “The goal is to help patients and their families make their own decisions, sometimes in a very limited amount of time. For example, with decisions about end-of-life care a chaplain’s spiritual guidance is often pivotal.”