#chaplainlife

Now that CPE has come to an end, I can finally start to look back with an open mind.  Here are some statistics from my summer as a chaplain:

I completed over 300 patient visits and attempted roughly 80 other patient visits.  

I attended to 26 traumas: 9 falls, 7 stabs, 5 motor vehicle accidents, 3 gunshot wounds, 1 burn, 1 transfer, and 1 assault.  I also conducted 19 trauma follow up visits.

I responded to 36 rapid response team pages and 15 RRT follow-ups, 13 stroke alerts and lots of stroke follow-ups, 9 spinal cord injuries, and 10 code blues.

I was privileged to attend 3 family meetings, 10 staff meetings, and 18 interdisciplinary rounds meetings. I also hosted 4 spirituality groups in the psych wards.

Reflecting back there are quite a few things I learned, some funny, some serious, but all important:

- Active code blue chest compressions are terrifying

- GSW (gunshot wound) is not always a death sentence

- People with tracheas can more than often talk

- But, freshly installed tracheas are really hard to look at

- Comfort care is a nice way of saying “we are going to watch you until you die, but you’ll be comfortable”

- Sometimes showing, expressing, and sharing patient and family emotions can be more beneficial to building the relationship than trying to hide them. (IE - cry with them)

- What do we really mean by “I have to be strong”? It’s almost more of a coverup or cop out so we don’t have to be vulnerable

- Never tell someone to calm down, and never play into their “what if” scenarios, it will make things worse

- Medical staff needs pastoral care almost as much, or sometimes more than, patients

- Often, the encounters I walked out of thinking I did nothing, were the most fruitful and helpful to those who needed it

- Don’t assume everyone in the psych ward is crazy. Most of them. But not all of them

- Horrifying can also be accompanied by holy: I was welcomed into places of vulnerability, to sit with patients and support them through difficult times. I did not have to be there, I was not a nurse or doctor, patients could turn me away, but I wasn’t; I was welcomed in.

There’s so much more that I learned during my time in CPE and I’m slowly working through processing and writing.  Thank you for all your support, love, wisdom, and guidance through this process.

Welcome to week six of the FAQ o’ the week series! Follow for weekly answers to questions about spiritual direction, bodywork, meditation, burnout care, ecstatic dance, spiritual direction supervision, and more. Today's question is: How is spiritual direction different from chaplaincy?

As someone who has served as a hospital chaplain, a hospice chaplain, and a spiritual director, I think chaplaincy and spiritual direction are close cousins. So close, that I sometimes think the two terms could be used interchangeably. (I’d be interested to hear any hot takes from other chaplains or spiritual directors about that.) I had a friend who once jokingly described spiritual direction as “chaplaincy for people who aren’t in crisis,” and I honestly struggle to find a better definition.

While spiritual direction certainly can provide care for people in crisis, the context for spiritual direction is typically less specific than that of chaplaincy. With plenty of exceptions, chaplaincy usually is practiced in the context of hospitals, hospice, schools, the military, etc. There are heavily emotionally charged circumstances in each of these settings, and chaplains serve as spiritual support for individuals in the thick of these circumstances. Again, while spiritual direction also could be helpful in and around these settings, spiritual direction tends to be less specialized in its scope. Spiritual direction lends itself to difficult times, neutral times, and euphoric times. It can serve as a temporary space of discernment for specific issues or life decisions, and it can be a normal part of one’s routine for general spiritual growth.