The Role Of A Healthcare Professional Chaplain In The Medical Profession

by Chaplain Paul Slater

Chaplain Career Opportunities for Clergy

When I responded to a hospice chaplain job opportunity, my pastoral ministry career took on the language of the medical profession. The hospital chaplain's role and the hospice chaplain's role as a spiritual care professional is to interface with the interdisciplinary medical team, providing a spiritual perspective to the patient's medical care plan. Professional chaplain career opportunities are also becoming more prevalent in other industries as well. Major corporations are becoming aware of the spiritual needs of their employees, hiring chaplains to address these workplace spiritual concerns. What they are discovering is that professional workplace chaplains are good for the bottom line. The professional chaplain helps address inner spiritual distress in a way that eventually increases a company's corporate morale.

Chaplain Career Motivation

One reason I expanded ministry career options to become a professional healthcare chaplain was that I could address the deepest concerns of hurting people from the perspective of faith. My chaplain job description includes pastoral care not only to patients and their families but calls for pastoral care interventions to our employees spiritual needs. My role as chaplain is not to convert people to my faith but to enable them to draw strength from their own faith. As I examine my chaplaincy career path, I see the fingerprints of God all over my life in guiding me to a pastoral ministry career to uniquely hurting people.

Helping People Face Difficulties, Disasters, Disease, And Discomforts

I have had several assignments as a professional chaplain that reveal my passion to help hurting people address how drawing upon their personal faith will help them face difficulties, disasters, disease, and discomforts of every kind.

Clergy Career Options That Fulfill God's Call to A Ministry Career

My clinical training started as a chaplain intern within the hospital setting, helping people whose hospitalization was creating doubts about the reality of God or to those whose disease prompted their need for the reassurance of God's love. I am also keenly aware that I minister out of my own pain as what is called a wounded healer. Changing career paths often is a response to the inner pain of an individual's life and my ministry career path is no different. But that simply means that my ministry career change from parish pastor to a chaplaincy career is a positive career choice to what are often negative ministry problems. A chaplaincy career can be one of the most positive career choices that wounded shepherds can make when they admit their own brokenness and inner pain. You will note that I use terms like leaving ministry and pastor burnout in my writings. I have chosen to reframe what appear as negative pastoral career experiences into positive career change motivation. There are so many ways to fulfill God's calling to ministry besides a parish pastor career. Fulfilling your pastoral calling,whether in a hospital chaplain position or perhaps an Associate Pastor Position, can be one of the greatest ministry career choices you make this year. For even more options, see Purpose Driven Ministry Options at ChurchStaffing.com.

Spiritual Assessment Questions Are The Most Affective Spiritual Assessment Tools

Since it was their faith that was the decisive factor in guiding my pastoral care approach, spiritual assessment questions are the most affective spiritual assessment tools that define faith's role in facing the challenges of life. I often use spiritual assessment questions or open ended statements with the purpose of helping the hurting individual define their own faith and draw from that faith reassurance giving them peace and comfort. For example, I have asked patients facing death "What does your faith say to what you are experiencing right now?". My role is to help them draw upon their personal faith resources for inner strength in facing death. Perhaps you are facing a tough and difficult situation yourself right at this very moment. How does your faith help you? When others you have known experienced life changing challenges, how did faith help them address their pain, their despair? May your answers to these spiritually defining questions lead you to some solid spiritual answers about God that will give you peace of heart and mind, assurance of God's love, and spiritual resources for facing the difficult times of life. Click to see a favorite product or featured website: