The National Secular Society are suggesting that the chruch should fund Chaplains in UK hospitals. This would save the NHS £40,000,000 per year.
I am far from a religious person. I believe there is something bigger and more powerful in this universe than I can understand. I have no idea if its some kind of intelligent entity designing the universe to some kind of plan. I seriously doubt it but thats just me. But I have seen the effect these chaplains can have on my patients lives. They are a crucial part of a lot of patients care. It is important to appreciate that most hospital inpatients in a general hospital will be elderly. They are from a generation which has led them to go to church every week. It is important for them to feel their God(s) havent abandoned them when they are ill or dying. A few months ago I had a patient who was incredibly ill, she was dying and frankly we couldnt explain why she was still alive. She was in an incredible amount of pain and understandibly terrified, until she saw our chaplain. After a bit of a chat and a couple of prayers this patient faced her imminent death without any noticable fear. It was incredible. This is the basis of my opinion that faith is a beautiful thing, it can lead you to do things that you are not capable of and it can bring you peace. I dont necessarily mean faith in God(s), faith in yourself, faith in science, etc. The problem is religion is political. You are told to believe like this, or worship like that otherwise you are going to be punished.
As I said I am far from a religious person but as a student nurse I cant help but recognise the significance of Holistic Care(caring for the whole. physical, emotional, spiritual, etc). I am deeply worried that if the job of financing these chaplains goes to the church they will be subject to the churchs politics the same as any other priest, vicar, etc. And this may well effect the emotional wellbeing of my patients.
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- Asclepius
- A Nurse staggering through the mundane and the insane. This blog documents some of my day to day experiences at work. In the interests of patient confidentiality I have to withhold names and locations. All of the opinions expressed herein are my own and do not reflect the opinions or of the NHS who to my knowledge do not read or approve any of my posts.
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16 comments:
I agree with you, I believe in a 'something' but not wishing to label it with any name such as God etc. I try to live by a code of conduct, not to do harm to others, to try and live life to the full and don't like to see others in need where I may have plenty.
But I accept that others have their views, who is to say who is wrong and who not and if chaplains offer comfort to the dying and the ill then they provide spiritual comfort and relief that can have far better effects than any drug can do and yes better by far to be paid for by the nhs than ruled by some political will in a church.
ps - def like the game of rugby, being part welsh I support the Welsh national team, but after SOH arrived in my life I started to follow Cornish Pirates, and I live close enough to Northampton/Bedford to follow them as well.
Virtual knees up next march then :0)
My beliefs are more or less - at the end of the day I dont know, I could waste my life speculating but I dont have the tools at my disposal to every fully understand. All that matters to me is that when i'm on my deathbed I can look back at who I was and say "I tried to be a good person". I answer to myself first and then to a God if such exists.
And in regards to the rugby, I used to only be a six nations fan. Since getting with my fiance I have become a die hard harlequins fanlargely thanks to her father who is like minded. Although we have the same discussions every year with the six nations as he's welsh :D
As a student nurse I am being trained to do my best to help a patients physical and emotional needs using the training, experience and resources available to me. I have to confess my training covers little in the way of spiritual needs of patients. This is why the hospital chaplain is invaluable. At my hospital she is an absolutely lovely woman anyway, she does not press religion on anyone, she offers to sit and talk with patients telling them that if they dont believe or want to talk about god then they can talk about anything else. She does an incredible job comforting patients in extreme distress regardless of their religious orientation.
I think you might be missing the point here - correct me if I'm wrong, of course. The source I read on this, from BBC News, seemed to be saying that the NSS acknowledged the important role that religion can play in people's lives and indeed in the healing process. Placebo effect or not, that it's still an effect is hard and indeed pointless to deny.
The point I saw as being raised was that these valuable people should not be funded on the already-stretched NHS bills, the money instead going to additional medical staff against the shortfall it's experiencing in that regard. It should instead be part of the person's local, familiar religious authority's job description to care for them.
Maybe I, like the NSS, am commenting on something about which I have insufficient information. But I don't see this stance as unreasonable. It's not denying people access to whatever religious comfort they feel they need, it's just transferring the responsibility for that provision to those whose responsibility it would be outside of the hospital.
It comes down to who these chaplains become answerable to. In the role they provide I am comfortable calling them healthcare professionals and its very hard to suggest otherwise given the effect they have. As such they have every right to be funded by the NHS. Admittedly the NSS is commenting on a matter of religion which is arguably their forte but there are other areas funding could be spared with no change to any front line staff. Also I would suggest that some portion of fines people incur for DUI's, Assault, etc should be passed on to the NHS is the patient was treated at a hospital. As it stands we only get the cost of treating that patient from the DoH.
It's an interesting point and one that I can't help sympathising with - they do provide care, which is beneficial to patient health. But when the care can be provided by their local vicar/priest/rabbi/whatever instead of a publicly-funded chaplain, I feel that option should take precedence.
Perhaps a compromise is to be reached by reducing the role of NHS chaplains but retaining them for cases in which the primary religious caregiver is unavailable for whatever reason.
As you say, however, as it ultimately comes down to a squabble over funding, there are less controversial ways of resolving that. If only they would be pursued.
My personal opinion is that the physical site of the chaplaincy should be funded and owned by the NHS, but that the only staff should be counsellors with some theological training. Specific religious needs should be funded by the individual religion, as they would be if the patient were outside of hospital.
The problem is the DoH spent a lot of time writing the policy, protocol and standards of conduct for the hospital chaplains. The church had some input but not nearly enough to make the chaplains anything more or less than healthcare professionals. As I said my chaplain is happy to take off her dog-colar and tell the patient that if they dont believe in a a god they dont have to talk about god, She may be the exception to all of the chaplains out there but as long as people like her exist I will fight for them. If the church fund them they will have full power over their policy and this WILL change the way the chaplains interact with the patients. MY patients.
I only know one hospital chaplain. He has a health problem himself: he cannot walk normally. Instead of using a wheelchair, he goes about on all fours, using kneepads; a fashion of locomotion which is so clownish that he instantly makes patients laugh even if they are at the point of death. He is self-deprecatory and vulnerable, like Rabbi Lionel Blue, who himself is not these days well enough to continue with his "thought for the day" spot on Radio 4's Today programme.
With such chaplains, a joke or two, an opportunity for perspective on the universality of human suffering, a bit of empathy and in amongst it all the opportunity (for the patient) to express spiritual yearnings or concerns, all these ingredients help do the trick. to call it "placebo" is to miss the point.
My understanding is that a hospital chaplain cannot be the purveyor of a particular religious sect or denomination, because he or she "does the rounds" to anyone who would like a visit, rather than being a sales rep for any brand of Christianity, Islam etc.
So the question is, would this change if the religious organisations funded the chaplains? Here in England I think that the public are quite sophisticated in these matters and most do not tolerate any form of evangelistic approach.
I agree, Vincent, though I would say that calling it "placebo" is not missing the point but merely giving the point its proper scientific name. If it's a purely psychosomatic effect that makes the patient feel better, it's a placebo.
This, in my own view at least, does not diminish the importance of the effect nor lessen the significance of the feelings elicited. We can accept the veracity of deep spiritual experiences while still acknowledging that they are placebos. Or I can, anyway.
All right, Darkwinter, we can put the effect in the pigeon-hole marked "placebo", and I won't object to that, so long as it's not part of some reductionist agenda that seeks to remove the sense of awe and gratitude that it causes people to feel.
If it were my bag to be an academic high-up in university administration, I would love to start a prestigious department of "Placebo Studies". I don't know what faculty it would fit into, and what name it would bear. "Miracles and Wonders" would be good.
It would be very dynamic because under the one roof would be a rainbow alliance of sceptics and practitioners, atheists and mystics; thrashing out the wheat from the chaff like students in the first (12th-century) universities - Paris, Bologna, Cambridge etc . Only in their case it was the ongoing dispute between Nominalists and Realists, corresponding roughly to Aristotelean versus Platonic.
Where do I sign up?! I'm very much of the opinion that the best academic progress comes from putting two opposing ideas in a box and seeing what comes of having them interact.
This has been an inspiring post.. both the initial thoughts and the contributions as well... fascinating to read and contemplate.
Where do you sign up indeed, A. Or may I call you Ascly? This is a project for a rainy day.
But I see it's a rainy day today. Very well then. More details over at my place. I'll post a link when they are ready.
I've set up a modest proposal as discussed above, here.
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