The United States has one of the most overtly religious populations of any country in the Western world, with 86% of the population saying that religion is either "very" or "fairly" important in their lives. Given religion's importance to most Americans, one might expect that religion and spirituality would be a significant consideration in essential areas of life. Certainly that is indeed the case with Americans' healthcare experiences -- and hospital stays in particular.
As healthcare consultant Rick Blizzard explained recently (see "Praying for Patient Satisfaction" in Related Items), Gallup's patient satisfaction database reveals that there is a strong correlation between patients' satisfaction with their hospital stays and how well the medical staff meets their spiritual and emotional needs. Blizzard notes that meeting patients' spiritual needs is not just the responsibility of the hospital's pastoral care staff, but also that of the caregivers (nurses, doctors, aides, etc.). Womack Rucker, vice president of Adventist Health Systems (AHS) -- the largest Protestant, not-for-profit healthcare system in the United States -- recognizes the necessity of making patients' spiritual needs a priority for all staff members of religiously affiliated hospitals.
AHS is a mission-based organization, Rucker says, and meeting patients' emotional and spiritual needs "is the key to our success in our mission of extending the healing ministry of Christ. We are about the wholeness of the individual -- physical, emotional, and spiritual needs."
Setting the Tone
Rucker believes that the responsibility for fulfilling AHS' spiritual mission begins at the top, with the hospital's senior leadership. When a hospital's CEO is seen in a new employee orientation session emphasizing the facility's spiritual mission, then staff members see this mission as a priority. "We try to hire hospital CEOs with the same philosophy about mission that we have," Rucker says. "When you hire the right people, the mission gets fulfilled."
Chaplaincy Staff as "Hospital Pastors"
Though participation from every caregiving employee is important, a hospital's pastoral care staff is still central to meeting patients' spiritual needs. Hospital chaplains visit patients and their families on a full-time basis, offering spiritual and emotional support during what can be particularly trying times.
Louise Kingston, retired Episcopal chaplain at the University Medical Center at Princeton in New Jersey, notes that hospital chaplains are not only important for the patients, but they also play an important role in meeting the spiritual and emotional needs of hospital staff members. Regular church pastors "simply cannot fill this role because it takes time and regular presence to build the trust necessary before staff will ‘use' the pastoral care staff in this way."
Kingston says hospital staff members have often become her "congregation." She notes that sometimes staff "are connected to a local congregation, but appreciate the ‘safety' of talking to a chaplain they know, rather than their own clergy." Other staff members are not associated with a religious organization, and so the chaplain's role in their lives takes on extra importance. These individuals "have come to trust us," Kingston says, "through watching us work with their patients."
Bottom Line
Pastors and other leaders of congregations need to make better use of the talents, skills, and knowledge of hospital pastoral care staff. By using hospital chaplains as a resource in their own training and the training of volunteers in the "dos and don'ts" of hospital visitation, pastors can improve the quality of care they give their members who are in the hospital.
New patient privacy regulations "have seriously limited the access clergy have to their members who are hospitalized," says Kingston. Chaplains, too, she says, "are much more restricted in our ability to notify and involve clergy -- even in the care of members of their own congregations." Patients must give express written consent in order for clergy to be notified, and congregation leaders would be well served to inform their members about this important regulation.
Despite the emotional strain and the frustrations of privacy regulations, Kingston has still found hospital chaplaincy to be rewarding. She feels gratified to have "been given the opportunity to … serve as an instrument of God's healing peace in the most trying of times for patients and their loved ones. I never go home feeling my day was wasted."
