Fall
Ministries - Chaplains Healthcares spiritual healers
By PATRICIA LEFEVERE
Special Report Writer New York
Margot Hover spots her
congregation. Theyre sitting on two long wooden church
benches on the 17th floor of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center here. A
procession of patients files back from their chemotherapy treatments. They
occupy the benches in the hospitals outpatient clinic, waiting with their
caregivers before and after their appointments. In their faces, Hover reads
apprehension, sickness, frustration -- sometimes anger.
Its a good time for a pastoral visit, the
Sloan-Kettering chaplain said. The hospital is a stop of last resort for many
patients. Their cancers have progressed, returned or they have come to
participate in an experimental treatment. They need an empathetic listener, she
said. Frequently dying is on their minds even if they cant speak the
word.
Hover views cancer as a family disease. Often she finds the best
way to be the hands of care to a suffering or dying patient is to pose
questions that will facilitate conversations among loved ones or lessen their
anxiety. She might ask the wife of a dying patient: What does it mean for
him to die? She may ask her husband: What meaning do you want the
rest of your life to have?
Would you like to say something to God? can open the
door to spiritual healing and peace, she said, even after surgical and medical
doors have closed. But not every patient is comfortable with a visit from the
chaplain. For some religion is an obstacle, a cause for distress, the former
nun said. Theres a difference between people who want a chaplain
and those who need us.
According to Hover, who holds a doctor of ministry degree and has
published widely in health care journals, Assessment is the name of the
game. Chaplains must make a spiritual diagnosis, she said and
bring care to all who suffer in body, mind and spirit. Often it means extending
care to family members and health care personnel.
Now in her fifth year at Sloan-Kettering, Hover also supervises
residences in clinical pastoral education. The hospital is among 20 New York
area institutions served by the HealthCare Chaplaincy. The 39-year-old agency
is a multifaith community of professionals dedicated to the advancement of
pastoral care, education and research. From a small Protestant chaplaincy
service on the citys East Side, it has grown into one of the largest and
most religiously diverse pastoral care providers in the nation. Most of its
chaplains are ordained men and women or religious sisters.
Jesuit Fr. Walter J. Smith serves as its president and CEO. In
1999 the agencys chaplains made more than a quarter of a million pastoral
visits in 28 clinical sites in and around New York City. More than 250 pastoral
education students representing 30 faith traditions have trained and practiced
spiritual care with the HealthCare Chaplaincy.
For the first time in its history, the chaplaincy opened its doors
to specialty residents last year. The four who enrolled came from as far away
as California and Nigeria to work at Sloan-Kettering for a year that Hover
likened to post-graduate study at a top-notch university. Each had already
completed a one-year clinical pastoral education residency -- as do all of the
agencys corps-in-training.
The further year of study allowed the specialists to take part in
weekly psychiatric, multidisciplinary, and pain and palliative care rounds.
They could offer observations on an equal footing with hospital medical staff,
social workers and bereavement specialists. They exchanged case study
presentations with psychiatry residents and got the chance to pursue their own
fields of interest. One resident chose to examine the research literature on
intercessory prayer, comparing those findings with data he collected during his
interactions with leukemia and colorectal cancer patients. Another resident
focused her pastoral study on feelings of shame among breast cancer
patients.
Chaplains are now an integral component of the modern health care
team that patients have a right to expect, Smith said. But changes in the
economic and legislative climate have put unprecedented pressures
on them. To survive, they have to justify their services against the bottom
line. Yet we know that what we provide for patients cant be
captured by cost analysis, said Smith, who came to the agency five years
ago after serving as academic dean and a clinical professor of psychology and
pastoral care at Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass.
When the body is sick, emotions are out of control and the
intellect is preoccupied with processing new information, a persons
faith and spirituality may be his or her only available resources, he
said.
Theres nothing mundane about what we do, noted
the Rev. George Handzo, head of chaplaincy at Sloan-Kettering. We get to
be part of a tremendously intimate experience. We get a chance -- if were
good -- to make a difference in their lives. It doesnt depend on if they
live or die. Its a question of how they die.
Handzo, a Lutheran minister and a specialist in the care of
children with cancer and their families, joined the agency in 1978. As for
qualifications for the job: You need to have thought about death and
dying and to have your theology on straight. Those who cant deal
theologically with suffering, wont last, he said. And
control freaks need not apply.
The HealthCare Chaplaincy serves more than area hospitals. It has
also moved into nursing homes and outpatient delivery sites. Last year Hover
and Imam Yusuf Hasan, the agencys only Islamic chaplain, attended to
dozens of families at New Yorks Kennedy Airport whose loved ones were
killed in the crash of Egypt Air.
The multi-faith aspect of the work has allowed the agency to
work effectively without sacrificing any of our religious
identities, Smith said. Besides some 18 denominations of Christians and
the single Islamic chaplain, the agency employs a number of Jewish chaplains
and a Buddhist chaplain.
The vision of what were about has begun to be
recognized, Smith said of his $5 million agency, which relies on
foundations, corporations and individual donors for half of its budget.
Theres a palpable sense that were making a difference, that
were changing the world of health care.
National Catholic Reporter, September 15,
2000
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