A Night As A Hospital Chaplain
Last night was my first time spending the night at the University hospital as their volunteer on-call chaplain. I introduced myself to the emergency department staff before I went to bed and then headed to the chaplain "sleep room," a small bedroom off of a larger dormitory for all of the overnight hospital staff. The hospital is spooky at night, with the only people in the hallways besides ghosts being drowsy overnight staff and gloomy members of patients' families. I was fast asleep at about nine o'clock, but about one A.M. in the morning I received an urgent page from a nurse.
A man who was in the cardiac Intensive Care Unit (ICU) was supposed to be on the mend after surgery but had taken a turn for the worse and his family needed counsel and prayer. I arrived on the scene and the staff was vacuuming out blood and putting in more blood products as quickly as they could. The six family members at his bedside came with me to a family room. Three of the family members spoke English and I prayed with them for healing and strength for the patient and his family. They were frightened by this quick turn of events and were worried about whether he was suffering, whether he was still bleeding and why he had a runny nose. Back in the patient's room after the wife had spent some private time with him and the staff had cleaned and performed an X-ray on him, I made sure the nurse kept them informed. The runny nose was normal, yes, he was still bleeding, and he was on the good medications so that he was sedated and could feel no pain. I prayed again with the family at his bedside, holding his hand. This morning as my shift ended I checked and he was still alive.
When I awoke, I was met with the knowing comraderie of the overnight staff sharing breakfast and cheerfully celebrating the ends of their shifts before the rush of the day began. We were a temporary society of care-givers brought together by tragedy and random scheduling happenstance. I received my clinical assignments. I'll be spending most of my volunteer time at the larger trauma hospital with with patients in the Burn Unit, the Cardiac ICU, the Medical ICU and the Elderly Care Unit. The rest of my volunteer time will be spent on-call for emergencies at both hospitals.