Spiritual Care: What To Expect When The Hospice Chaplain Visits

By Faith Fitzgerald, DMin, BCC, Director of Community Health Programs

Hospice of the Chesapeake

. https://www.hospicechesapeake.org/

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Spiritual Care: What To Expect When The Hospice Chaplain Visits

While some people are religious, all people are spiritual. All people have things that bring us meaning and purpose. All people seek a path to peace. That is especially important at end of life and helping people find that path is the main role of a chaplain. For that reason, we are also known as “spiritual care providers”.

Spiritual care providers are part of the interdisciplinary care team of medical professionals who meet weekly to share and discuss the progress of their patients. When you sign on to hospice, you’ll get a call from your spiritual care provider to schedule a visit.

We come into your home with no set agenda. We’re there to listen to you, learn from you and support you. We may ask some questions that will help us complete a spiritual assessment, a tool that helps us and the rest of the team know who you are. What’s most important to you at this moment and how we can support that? Are there spiritual beliefs or practices that will help you at the end of life that we can nurture? Do you need someone to talk to about how you’re feeling? Our goal is to come away from that first visit with answers to these and other questions.

Even if the spiritual care provider is not meeting with you, we are still caring for you. We are connecting with other members of the care team and staying up to date with what’s happening in your care. They might hear from the team that there has been a change in your journey. They would likely reach out to offer help navigating that change.
Rest assured that after you die, the spiritual care provider will call immediately to see how the family is doing. Hopefully, we had the time to help you plan a funeral. Often, we are involved in the actual service, especially for those who did not have a faith community to help properly memorialize your life.

When the services are done, the spiritual care provider can be a bridge to guiding the family to the grief care they need.

We hope you will keep this in mind when the spiritual care provider, or chaplain, calls. We have open minds and hearts whose only goal is to help you find peace as you prepare to say goodbye.