Tell me about The HealthCare Chaplaincy. The Chaplaincy is a not-for-profit, multi-faith organization. Our certified chaplains provide spiritual care to patients in 17 partner hospitals and other medical institutions in the New York area, and our Pastoral Care Consulting Service helps hospitals across the country establish or improve an existing pastoral care program. The Chaplaincy is also a leader in pastoral research and the largest multifaith educator of future chaplains. Our students come from across the country and around the globe. Like our clinical staff of chaplains, they represent mainline religious tradition including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

What is “pastoral care”? Pastoral care is service to others by means of spiritual counseling and support. At The HealthCare Chaplaincy, pastoral care is always non-denominational and non-proselytizing in nature, always using the patient’s own belief system as a starting point. A Protestant chaplain, for example, could provide pastoral care to an Orthodox Jewish or Muslim patient as she would another Protestant. Certified chaplains are educated in the listening and counseling arts and are thus well positioned to help patients reflect upon the religious and spiritual questions that typically emerge in healthcare settings.

What do certified chaplains do? First and foremost, the certified chaplain is the spiritual care specialist on the healthcare team who has the training necessary to treat spiritual distress in all its forms. Their primary task is to help people discover and maximize their own spiritual/religious resources in the service of healing. They provide informed, non-proselytizing spiritual and emotional care to patients, their family members, and the healthcare staff. Though chaplains may conduct specific religious services for individuals of their own faith tradition, certified chaplains are equally capable of treating patients of other faith groups, as well as individuals with no religious beliefs whatsoever. Today’s healthcare chaplains play many different roles in the institutions where they are employed, ranging from patient care and staff support to community education and participation on bioethics committees.

For examples of professional chaplains at work caring for their patients, please visit Healing Moments.

Are all hospital chaplains professionally certified? No, although all of the pastoral caregivers employed by The HealthCare Chaplaincy are certified, as are thousands of chaplains of different faiths throughout North America. To be fully certified, healthcare chaplains must complete at least four 400-hour units of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), which includes a combination of supervised patient care and academic work. The HealthCare Chaplaincy is the largest provider of multifaith CPE in the country. Aspiring chaplains from across the country and around the globe are drawn to The HealthCare Chaplaincy’s highly regarded CPE program.

How does The HealthCare Chaplaincy serve the public? The HealthCare Chaplaincy employs over 30 chaplains from many faith groups who serve at 17 partner hospitals and other medical facilities throughout the New York metropolitan area. Each year, our chaplains conduct more than 225,000 visits to patients, family members, and medical staffs at their institutions. Through its Pastoral Care Consulting Service, The Chaplaincy helps hospitals nationwide in their efforts to build or expand an existing pastoral care department. The Chaplaincy’s Community Outreach department offers a variety of support and bereavement groups for individuals facing many different kinds of pain or loss. These groups are held throughout the year and are of little or no cost to the public. As the largest provider of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), The Chaplaincy is an important resource to aspiring chaplains from across the country and around the world.

Can anyone enroll in a CPE program? CPE programs are open to the general public, but the majority of CPE students are either seminarians completing a pastoral education requirement, or ordained clergy seeking to broaden their ministries and perhaps contemplating a career in professional multifaith chaplaincy. Click here for more information about enrolling in a HealthCare Chaplaincy CPE program and answers to frequently asked questions.

What has The Chaplaincy’s research department discovered about the benefits of pastoral care? The HealthCare Chaplaincy Research Department, founded in 1998, has since its inception published over 50 studies on the connection between spirituality and health, and on the unique role chaplains play helping patients, family members, and medical staff increase wellbeing by leveraging their spiritual and emotional resources. Click here to see a selected list of original HealthCare Chaplaincy studies, many of which can be directly downloaded.