Heart to Heart: Spiritual Care through Deep Listening

Bring the heart back to healthcare through the power of deep listening.
In today's high-pressure healthcare environment, nurses and caregivers are often pulled in many directions-charting, tasks, and time demands-leaving little room for authentic human connection. Yet what patients need most is to be seen, heard, and safe.
In Heart to Heart: Spiritual Care through Deep Listening, chaplain and educator Dr. Clare Biedenharn introduces the Quaker Listening Model (QLM)-a simple, profound framework to shore up the tools you may already know as you reconnect with what you love best about the work you are committed to do. Grounded in both evidence-based practice and timeless wisdom, this model helps caregivers move beyond transactional care to presence-based connection.
Through powerful stories-from the ICU to Hurricane Katrina-Dr. Clare shows how intentional listening can:

• Rehumanize care by restoring compassion and presence at the bedside.
• Renew professional purpose for nurses and caregivers facing burnout.
• Strengthen communication between patients, families, and healthcare teams.
• Foster spiritual resilience in the midst of crisis and suffering.

If you long to bring deeper meaning to your practice, Heart to Heart offers practical tools, reflection prompts, and real-life examples that make listening not only a skill but a healing art.
Discover how one small shift-listening with your whole presence-can transform care, renew your spirit, and change lives.
Foreword written by Dr. Jean Watson