4 Triage and manage crises in the practice of spiritual care.
PPS 4 is not about triage when used in the scheduling of a chaplain’s plans when their day starts. If you would like to get a better understanding of that practice just in case it helps formulate your approach to competent triage, I recommend Mark LaRocca-Pitt’s article on protocol-based referrals.[1] and another article on who requests and needs spiritual care in the hospital.[2]
Triage has roots from battlefield etiquette during wars in the 1800s. When triage is used in the medical field it refers to the ratio of resources per patient and a ranking of the patient’s injury severity. A day as a chaplain could be filled with various patient visits and other responsibilities, then a crisis occurs that requires the chaplain’s presence. While that is happening, a cardiac arrest code is being called for an ambulance on the way and their family is in the waiting room. While all that is happening, a young mother is in the labor and delivery unit and has been taken to emergency surgery. This also happens to be the time of the day when the other chaplains on staff are having a ministerial meeting across the city in pursuit of the OL 5 competency.
The competency is asking you to describe a moment when you had competing spiritual care needs and how you ranked them, the actions you took, and the outcomes. Your values and experiences will be essential in demonstrating this. Factors to navigate are the acuity of the patient’s needs and the timing of the chaplain’s resources or capacity.
[1] Mark LaRocca-Pitts, “Protocol-Based Referrals: A Method for Selecting Patients in the Electronic Age.” Chaplaincy Today, 26, no. 2 (2010): 31.
[2] George Fitchitt, Peter M. Meyer and Laurel Arthur Burton, “Spiritual Care in the Hospital: Who Requests It? Who Needs It?” Journal of Pastoral Care 54, no. 2 (2000): 173.
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