Thank you for writing about chaplaincy! I'm a Presbyterian minister whose entire ministry has been hospital chaplaincy and now run a Spiritual Care Department at a large Level 1 Trauma Center and teach chaplaincy training programs (Clinical Pastoral Education). I often write and speak about chaplaincy in an effor to raise awareness about our vocation and how helpful we can be. Our field has a marketing problem in that many people don't know what a chaplain is or does!
I'm so grateful to Wendy Cadge for being an awesome advocate and chaplaincy researcher. Just a note about the research - the majority of people who we are discussing end-of-life issues with or providing support to while are dying would be unable to fill out a survey, so that will have likely skewed the data. We encouter the same issue in the hospital, where patients who die - of course - cannot fill out surveys, so often the work that we do with them and their families goes unreported/researched.
I was a nurse for fifteen years before I became a pastor (just retired after twenty-eight years in parish ministry). And my brother is a pastor who served as a hospital chaplain for over twenty-five years, most of it part-time while he also served a congregation part-time. So I've seen hospital chaplaincy from more than one perspective.
Sadly, one of the strong trends among hospitals is to cut the hours of chaplains. This is seen as a "cost saving necessity." Chaplains are being asked to demonstrate their worth by documenting concrete "results", which is a difficult task. And I sincerely doubt that any hospital administrators are asking the patients about the value of chaplains. Hospital administrators tend to have a very different idea of "good results" than the people who are giving the bedside care.
Any possibility of sharing your observations with people in the health care system? Perhaps contacting some hospital administrators and asking if there is a publication or organization that might be interested in sharing your data?
I haven’t read the book, but your comment about the challenge of documenting results sounds about right. Chaplains, say in a prison, argue that performance metrics for their activities are difficult to come up with.
Thanks for sharing this info. As a university chaplain myself, I find this interesting and encouraging. I often say to people that chaplaincy is an important part of our response to the decline of Christendom. If people are less likely to come to us, we should go to them, and chaplaincy is a great way to do that!
H Ryan, hospital chaplain director here. It seems to me that in your analysis of the graphs above you forgot to control for age. In other words, older people are more likely to go to the hospital, and also more likely to be religious, and therefore more likely to encounter and/or ask for a chaplain. Not only that, but older people are more likely to have served in the military, or have a family member who did, and therefore know what chaplains are from either the time of their service or participation in veteran's groups, which often have a chaplain. There's even data, which I don't have at my fingertips, that a whole generation became familiar with chaplains through the TV show MASH, where the chaplain was the voice of compassion and humanity during a brutal war. In fact, IIRC, the Association of Professional Chaplains (or perhaps the Catholic chaplains) honored the actor who played the chaplain on MASH because of the good he did for the profession. A TV show from two generations ago is definitely something correlated to age. Thanks for this post.
You wrote at the end of the article. “As religion continues to decline, one has to wonder if this will further thin the ranks of chaplains in the United States.”. There are other types of chaplains other than Christian faith based. There are Hindu, Muslim, atheistic, humanist, and Buddhist chaplains. I don’t think the Chaplain profession is /will be dependent the attendance in Christian churches.
32-year-old hospice chaplain here. Thanks for writing
Thank you for writing about chaplaincy! I'm a Presbyterian minister whose entire ministry has been hospital chaplaincy and now run a Spiritual Care Department at a large Level 1 Trauma Center and teach chaplaincy training programs (Clinical Pastoral Education). I often write and speak about chaplaincy in an effor to raise awareness about our vocation and how helpful we can be. Our field has a marketing problem in that many people don't know what a chaplain is or does!
I'm so grateful to Wendy Cadge for being an awesome advocate and chaplaincy researcher. Just a note about the research - the majority of people who we are discussing end-of-life issues with or providing support to while are dying would be unable to fill out a survey, so that will have likely skewed the data. We encouter the same issue in the hospital, where patients who die - of course - cannot fill out surveys, so often the work that we do with them and their families goes unreported/researched.
Great point about the end of life situation. I was wondering if they had a close family member or friend fill out the survey, but I guess not.
Happy to work on this data. It's an important part of the tapestry of American religion.
I was a nurse for fifteen years before I became a pastor (just retired after twenty-eight years in parish ministry). And my brother is a pastor who served as a hospital chaplain for over twenty-five years, most of it part-time while he also served a congregation part-time. So I've seen hospital chaplaincy from more than one perspective.
Sadly, one of the strong trends among hospitals is to cut the hours of chaplains. This is seen as a "cost saving necessity." Chaplains are being asked to demonstrate their worth by documenting concrete "results", which is a difficult task. And I sincerely doubt that any hospital administrators are asking the patients about the value of chaplains. Hospital administrators tend to have a very different idea of "good results" than the people who are giving the bedside care.
Any possibility of sharing your observations with people in the health care system? Perhaps contacting some hospital administrators and asking if there is a publication or organization that might be interested in sharing your data?
I haven’t read the book, but your comment about the challenge of documenting results sounds about right. Chaplains, say in a prison, argue that performance metrics for their activities are difficult to come up with.
Thanks for sharing this info. As a university chaplain myself, I find this interesting and encouraging. I often say to people that chaplaincy is an important part of our response to the decline of Christendom. If people are less likely to come to us, we should go to them, and chaplaincy is a great way to do that!
Chaplaincy is on the rise within our state. Now moving into outpatient clinics.
H Ryan, hospital chaplain director here. It seems to me that in your analysis of the graphs above you forgot to control for age. In other words, older people are more likely to go to the hospital, and also more likely to be religious, and therefore more likely to encounter and/or ask for a chaplain. Not only that, but older people are more likely to have served in the military, or have a family member who did, and therefore know what chaplains are from either the time of their service or participation in veteran's groups, which often have a chaplain. There's even data, which I don't have at my fingertips, that a whole generation became familiar with chaplains through the TV show MASH, where the chaplain was the voice of compassion and humanity during a brutal war. In fact, IIRC, the Association of Professional Chaplains (or perhaps the Catholic chaplains) honored the actor who played the chaplain on MASH because of the good he did for the profession. A TV show from two generations ago is definitely something correlated to age. Thanks for this post.
You wrote at the end of the article. “As religion continues to decline, one has to wonder if this will further thin the ranks of chaplains in the United States.”. There are other types of chaplains other than Christian faith based. There are Hindu, Muslim, atheistic, humanist, and Buddhist chaplains. I don’t think the Chaplain profession is /will be dependent the attendance in Christian churches.
I hope you get your hands on some chicken soup and some Sudafed.
Was there data on where they met the chaplain? (Military, hospital, hospice, prison etc)
I spent 2 years recently working as a hospice chaplain and these stats and insights resonate with my experience