A Day In The Life Of A Hospital Chaplain
This weekend I served my first on-call shift as a volunteer chaplain at the local University hospital. The first two hours I nervously waited for my first page, and then two came at once! One was for a patient in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and one was for a patient in the psych ward asking for a Bible. I headed to the ICU, but they were ready to clean that patient, so I stopped by the psych ward to deliver the Bible. The psychiatric patient was very sweet. She had tried to kill herself by wrecking her car, but she had become hopeful for the future. I hooked her up with some resources in the local Baptist community at her request and notified a Social Worker of her concerns about not being able to pay her rent. I prayed with her and then headed back to the ICU. The patient there was not in good shape, however she was brave despite her anxiety about being in critical condition. I sat with her for an hour and a half and then prayed with her after her chest x-ray and left when it was time for her lunch. I got to go and chat with another psychiatric patient and then was paged to the bedside of an eighty-year-old woman. The doctors swore up and down that she was healthy as a horse and heading for discharge, but she was very frightened of death, so I prayed with her and agreed to keep her in my prayers. It was so nice to enter a troubled room and leave it with smiles. My experience was very rewarding and I'm so glad I decided to do this Clinical Pastoral Education internship!