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2 Establish, deepen, and conclude professional spiritual-care relationships with sensitivity, openness, and respect.
PPS 2 asks for examples where the well-being of a care recipient has been improved. You should be able to articulate one desired outcome for your care and then provide an example how your care supported that outcome. Then provide more examples of this for a patient, a patient’s family member/friend, and an institutional staff member.
I need to point out that this is the only competency that specifically mentions staff support. I believe staff support needs to become a larger part of the competent chaplain’s practice. My CPE units were all attained before COVID-19. Staff interactions tended to be pursued to build a relationship so that the staff would call the chaplain more readily for a patient. It felt like it was for face time with staff just to get the juicy verbatims that were hiding in the patient’s rooms. Then a pandemic brought about isolation.[1]
Many rooms were restricted access and family visitors were being turned away at the door. I remember standing inside the hospital entrance taking the mantle of being the friendly face to tell families they weren’t able to visit at this time. We had to share this role as each staff member could only do it for so long until the psycho-social-moral fatigue was too much. The amount of time spent with patients shrank considerably and the staff care increased through these events. I started carrying around print-outs of trivia card games and created a little tournament between units with prizes and even a bracket. The brief moment of respite, when a nurse could think about silly things like how many flavors of Diet Coke there are or when the pyramids were built, gave a healing relief. I have since continued this practice and was nominated for a non-clinical staff award because of how much this supported them.
Concluding relationships is just as important as establishing and deepening them. Whereas psychotherapy sessions usually have established visit lengths and session limits, the chaplain visits have no parameters. In both visit length and staff interactions knowing when to step-away is a common and complex part of chaplaincy. For example, a palliative patient and family may spend months building relationships with the chaplain that end at discharge. One study sums the concern up well, “These professionals must balance between “hovering” versus “abandoning” patients and families—between being too available (and thus impeding patients’ or families’ potential needs for time alone) and not being available enough.”[3] As you could tell, i would apply this quote to staff relationships as well.
[1] Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2022), 178.
[2] David Schnarch and Susan Regas, The Crucible Differentiation Scale: Assessing Differentiation in Human Relationships, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 38 (2012): 641.
[3] Robert Klitzman et. al., Exiting Patients’ Rooms and Ending Relationships: Questions and Challenges Faced by Hospital Chaplains. Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling, 77(2), (2023): 98.
PPS 2 focuses on improving the well-being of patients, their families, and staff. It highlights the importance of supporting staff, especially during the pandemic when chaplains shifted from patient care to supporting overworked hospital staff. One example includes organizing trivia tournaments for staff to offer a brief escape from stress, which earned recognition. The section also discusses the challenge of knowing when to end relationships, as chaplain visits don’t have set time limits. It’s important to balance being available without overwhelming patients or staff, and this balance is key in building meaningful connections.
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