Hospital chaplains address needs of patients and staff
As chaplains at St. Mary's Hospital, Michelle Holtmann and Zephorah Benson never know what the day might bring.
Whether talking to the parents of newborn babies or helping patients struggling with end-of-life issues, Holtmann and Benson address the spiritual and psychological needs of patients and their loved ones as they work through their anxieties.
"Part of a person's wellness is the wholeness of mind, body and spirit," Holtmann said. "We work holistically to care for the whole patient."
Hospital chaplaincy often is a misunderstood vocation. Those unfamiliar with the work may equate chaplains to pastors who visit hospitals in their free time. In actuality, chaplains are full-time employees of the hospital and an integral part of the clinical team who, in addition to working with patients, also participate on committees and interdisciplinary teams to advocate for understanding and open-mindedness among medical staff.
"Pastors also are more denominationally focused and work to guide everyone into the same spiritual direction, theology, and set of traditions," Holtmann added. "Chaplains are more ecumenically focused across all faith traditions."
Chaplains are more akin to counselors than traditional pastors, Athens Regional Medical Center Chaplain Carol Fletcher said. She added that they seek to immerse themselves in the spiritual view and experiences of the patient or patient's family instead of change them.
But the primary job of a chaplain is simply to listen, she said.
"We create a safe space for people to tell their story, and by telling their story, various forms of healing take place," Fletcher said. "One day I was called late in the day to visit a man who had been very difficult and I sat with him and he told me his story."
As she listened, Fletcher heard how the man had experienced severe loss in every area of his life. Eventually, he confessed that he no longer felt any purpose to his life.
"That's why he couldn't participate in his health care the way he needed to in order to get better, because he saw no hope," she said. "But, as he told me his story, he did share the meaning that was still left in his life and the values that were going to get him through. He let me ask a few evaluating questions and ended up seeing that there was still a reason to live. When I went back to check on him the next day, he was having a better day and was getting ready to go home."
The relationships between chaplains and the people they interact with are short, and there are pros and cons to that, Benson said.
On one hand, chaplains have deeper conversations with people because they feel more comfortable sharing things with a chaplain than their pastor because they know they won't see the chaplain again. On the other, short relationships also mean chaplains don't know what happens to people once they leave the hospital.
"I talked with a man once who came in, former military, who was dealing with PTSD. The reason he was brought to St. Mary's was because he'd had an episode in a store where he thought he was under attack," Benson said. "He told me about his experiences and the imagery that was coming back and said he felt like giving up. He said his goal was to get out of here and visit his son one last time and then kill himself. We talked about what it would look like for him to look at life differently and he was discharged from here and went to another facility in Atlanta for psychiatric treatment, but I don't know where he is now. You have to learn to be OK with that."
Chaplains also work to help nurses, doctors and hospital staff who feel overwhelmed.
"I always offer doctors and nurses the opportunity to vent or share their burdens in the morning because if they are having a bad day it can trickle down and the patient could have a bad day," Benson said. "It's about all of us working together so the patients and staff have a good day and get what they need."
Follow faith, health and Blueprint reporter April Burkhart at www.facebook.com/AprilBurkhartABH.
