Six chaplains share stories from the spiritual front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.
Hospital chaplains are specialists in grief, trained to provide comfort to dying patients and families experiencing the deepest pain and loss. But the scenes inside hospitals hit hard by theHuffPost talked to six chaplains about trying to connect with people without the aid of touch or sometimes even personal presence, the trauma they’ve witnessed among their medical colleagues, and how the United States might begin to grapple with the scale of these losses.
What I have learned is that it is very difficult to show care and deep empathy behind a mask and gown and without touch. Our time with a patient and/or family is so rooted in a bedside presence, holding a hand, offering solace.weight of sadness for all who lost so much: their health, their finances, their jobs, their hope. It
In one instance, a patient was dying in an isolation room and the patient’s spouse feared being inside the room due to her own health conditions. One of our chaplains remained at the spouse’s side just outside the room to help share the pain of not being at her partner’s bedside as he died.
That first week, I spent a lot of time with staff because families were slowly but surely not allowed to be in the hospital to stop the spread of the virus. So the majority of my days began by just talking to staff. Letting them share whatever is going on with them, their fears and anxieties. Constant communication is key. We just have to do that a lot more to reassure families and patients. Listening and finding a way to put pieces of them in the room goes a long way as well. I’ll get emails from families that will send me pictures to print up and post in the patients’ rooms. Or I will write down an inside joke from a family member and have the nurse read it to the patient when they go in, just to get a smile.I feel like chaplains are more essential now than ever.
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