Gary Batchelor, D. Min., on serving with blessings and burdens

Singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land

When I read Stephen Harding’s article “Making the Case for Chaplaincy” (PlainViews, vol. 4, no. 16), I found myself agreeing in several ways but overall being more argumentative than positively challenged. The responses in the subsequent issue of PlainViews have stimulated me to articulate my response.

We must live out our vocation as chaplains in terms of calling and professionalism rather than on being understood. Our best educational tools about chaplaincy are indeed “who we are” and how we respond to the multiple needs we encounter – especially those 3 AM responses to crisis. I share (most of the time) Chaplain Harding’s confidence in the ability to be effective in all kinds of unexpected and chaotic situations. I find this kind of challenge one of the most fulfilling elements of the calling to chaplaincy. (There is also a very real temptation to hubris in his statement and mine). “Sitting in a room whining doesn’t cut it.” Whatever our situation, that is where we minister. A part of the calling is to be creative, proactive, and tenacious. With all of this, I agree.

My disagreement comes in Chaplain Harding’s apparent assumption that chaplaincy is routinely practiced in a multi-staff situation with students. The largest single specialty group in APC is the one-person department. The variety of settings for one-person chaplaincy is great; the frequency of isolation and task overload is high! A one-person chaplain cannot do a lot of 3 AM calls in a week without crashing very hard. Some organizations expect that there should be no limits on chaplain availability, and “don’t understand” the chaplain who sets limits. If the setting is large at all, the daily challenge for a one-person department is to determine exactly where and how to best spend time.

I respond to the issue of educating the staff about who and what chaplains do with a resounding “yes, but….” No one can educate my hospital staff about chaplaincy as well as I. Should that education be in a formal orientation format? Over many years in my setting, I have been moved in and out of the orientation schedule, depending on what regulatory and organizational “hot buttons” need focus in the masses of information that deluge new employees. Maybe routine inservices are the way to educate… but, it is almost impossible to gather a partial nursing staff from a single unit for an educational session of more than a few minutes. They have too many patients. Their most pressing education is new equipment or new procedures. There is also rapid turnover, agency nurses, and varied hours of staffing patterns. In this reality, how can one do effective education without skewing time commitments from other important aspects of a one-person chaplaincy department?

A subtle issue in educating staff lies in the deeply ingrained cultural and religious expectations about what role ministry is expected to play in a healthcare setting. I live in the heart of the Bible Belt. At the risk of making drastic generalizations, the expectations of ministry are very heavily influenced by “calling,” Bible knowledge, evangelical theology, conventional expectations of prayer and comforting, and limited experiences with diversity. The certification process for professional chaplains seeks to assure that a chaplain’s foundational identity addresses these kinds of issues and that the chaplain will be proficient in them. However, the uniqueness we offer, and the areas we often feel least understood, are when we move to a more clinical, inclusive, professional body-of-expertise stance. There are preachers everywhere in my community. It is difficult for many to understand what is so unique about a chaplain. At best, the personal experiences that staff members have with me are often incongruous with their religious history and with the perspectives they find reinforced in their own church.

The degree of understanding and support experienced by a chaplain is highly influenced by the particular organizational culture and administrative reporting structure. The organizational culture influences how data will be received and interpreted. The chaplain may be far more willing to seek data-based quality initiatives than his or her administration. If the organization uses data in limited and concrete ways, the only chaplaincy data that matters may be “how many visits last month.” The expectation may be that goal-setting for the following month will be how many more visits you can make in order to be “better/more productive.” Quality and depth of care as understood by the chaplain can be discounted in a culture that only counts numbers. In 2002, Catholic Health Initiatives published an extensive and complex study of chaplain effectiveness, but the study presupposed a strong commitment by a religious system to provide adequate spiritual care. Such findings may not be applicable to non-religious organizations, even if those organizations have expectations about measuring effectiveness of chaplains. Bottom line – there is good research about the positive impacts that chaplaincy and targeted spiritual care can have on clinical outcomes and customer satisfaction. However, if the organization chooses to measure something else or to discount certain data, the chaplain may have little or no recourse.

I will claim the temerity to offer this as a kind of “one-person department” response to Chaplain Harding, though it is my own response. I am confident that I am not the only chaplain who has had to wrestle with the question “If I were a better chaplain, would ‘they’ understand better what I do and would like to do?” Most days, my answer is to affirm that I am an excellent chaplain and that I still love my calling after being here for 32 years. I serve where I serve with all of the attendant blessings and burdens. It is my responsibility to be creative, proactive, and tenacious whether or not I feel understood and appreciated. There are times when I sit and whine a bit. I get lonely and weary. Because I have no ready access to a true colleague, I am frequently not sure whether I am whining or simply making a thoughtful evaluation of my setting. I am sure that, at least today, I take issue with Chaplain Harding’s article as seeming too simplistic and too disdainful to be helpful for me.

Do you have thoughts about advocacy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.