‘A clear center but no clear boundaries.’: The construction of professional identities in spiritual care through boundary work in participatory action research within health care

Spiritual care is increasingly seen as a task of all health care professionals. This is challenging for chaplains working in health care, who hold spiritual care at the heart of their profession but don’t feel rooted in a strong professional identity. In this article we discuss a participatory action research that aimed at strengthening the professional identity of health care chaplains by forming collaborative learning communities of chaplains and general practice mental health. The focus is on the ‘boundary work’ and how participatory action research contributes to this. Relational professionalism, Dialogical Self Theory and Boundary Theory are combined to interpret the complex relational-dialogical processes of negotiating one’s identity within the relationships with diverse others: clients, mental health nurses and society. The result is a more articulated and at the same time flexible professional identity for healthcare chaplains. Participatory action research contributes to these boundary processes by stimulating reflection, explicating, eliciting or encouraging different voices and facilitating the dialogue between these professionals.