Practical Advice for Ministering to Patients

So hospital visitations for me are very, very difficult because they bring up this – I’m telling you my narrative.

That’s alright –we’re doing a bit of an experiment here. Hospital visits are very, very difficult for me for that reason, I almost cannot walk in a hospital and not think back to that experience. The question that it raises is: what advice would you give to people who are visiting patients in the hospital? You are a chaplain you are doing this all the time, but people who are going in and they themselves wrestle with it –they’re like me. They wrestle with how to handle the hospital visit. I know that there are two types of processers, generally as people. Some people process by being absolutely quiet, you almost have to pull anything out so they go and visit and they just sit. Other people process and they feel like they’ve got to talk all the time, they feel responsible to almost entertain the patient which may or may not be good for them. So what advice do you give to people who walk in?

So that’s one piece. My second piece that I would say to someone who is in the room and there’s nowhere to sit except on the porta potty and there’re all these machines in there and you do not know what to do with your hands and you’re trying to think of what’s Scripture to quote or something and that all these weird pressures come up as you’re standing over someone maybe that you love, who doesn’t look normal and is in trouble in some way is to ask the patient what he wants. Do you want to talk? Would you like me to sit down? Are you sleepy? How are you feeling now? I came here to see you, I want to respect what is best for you, if you want me to stay, I’ll stay as long as I can. If you just want to know that I came by, here I am and I’ll be happy to respect what’s best for you.

There is something weird that happens when those of us who are so –it is precious to us that we are ambassadors for Jesus. When we walk into the room of someone who is sick, we forget to be normal and just to make it a visit like you would visit with anyone else, we want to get the gospel there, and we want to be encouraging, but it can just feel like you’re falling down stairs as you try and love the person. I think the best intervention I know is to ask the patient. What do you need?

I guess resist the temptation to fix them, and to think that you’re going to come in there, and it’s going to be totally different. You walk and do your magic dust and in the evening, everything’s well. Presence is huge. Presence is huge. I think a lot of people just flat avoid for the reasons you mentioned: either bad experience or they don’t know what to say, so they just avoid it altogether. Some people who are very close to other people don’t show up because they don’t know what to do. Just show up Just be honest. Go and show up and say, “I don’t even know what to say, Can I help you? Can I pray? What is your biggest prayer request right now?” Just ask that. I mean obviously you can say, “Obviously, you want to get well. But it there a big prayer request you have? And somebody will say “Yeah you know I need these nurses to change. Something has to give with these nurses..” It could be way out of the blue.

Let us talk about the church side first; how churches help people to get there? I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a sermon, for example, on patient care. For all the pastoral visits I’ve had, “Pray for so-and-so and so-and so,” and “We visited her in the hospital…” I hear that all the time. But I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a sermon in thirty plus years of being in the church, that actually talked to people in the pews about how they can minister to people who are hurting on their own homes. Or even a Sunday school class. I know that when I told people, Oh, we’re going to do a podcast.” “Oh what are you doing to do it on?” “Patient care.” It was like “What? Why would you do that?” Well, you do it because people do get sick. They go to the hospital; they need to be ministered to. Why should we leave the ministering only to the people who they’re maybe meeting for the first time because they happen to be in a hospital? What advice would you give to people to encourage them to get out of their comfort zones, if you will?

There’s so many interesting things that pass through my mind when I look at my patient as my Lord. Like, when I see them die, it reminds me that he did that too. But back to your question, I think a really practical thing for church ministers –professional or lay– who are going to visit someone is to go in pairs, because then you can lean on each other. And if one of you freaks out and cannot think of anything to say or ask, then maybe the other person can carry it along for a little while. And then you have this lovely little community representing the church where probably the patient worships. You might just end up having a little church service right there in the room. And it does take a lot of pressure off because some of the disorientation that happens when a person who is not used to going into the hospital is just getting to the room is a stressful experience. You have to figure out where you can park, not going to get towed, and how much was that going to cost me just I have to leave my car here. And you go into a place that you cannot orient yourself to the outside. There’re no windows. The passageways are long and daunting. Everyone who is in there is under stress anyway, so I think people who are perceptive to that kind of stress in their environment can feel it right away when they walk into a hospital that this is an intense place, so just having somebody there to do it together is helpful.

So I think part of it is just preaching the Word as it written and to focus on the things that he is focusing on. To have more people doing it — the staff — because a lot of times and this is really true; a lot of times when people are sick, the higher up the person is in the church, the more — they want the higher ups, they really do. If you just send somebody who’s in a Sunday school,

We sometimes wrestle with: there is so much in the gospels where you see Jesus ministering to the sick. And of course what we’re drawn to when we read the stories is the fact that there is a miracle or healing taking place. So some people say, “Well I can’t go and heal someone, so what is the point?” But really, part of the point of the way Jesus is ministering is he was ministering compassion to people. He was ministering care. He was showing that what he was preaching was also reflected by what he was doing in ministering to people and then in reaching out and helping them in a way that he could.

This is to take your picture of when I am ministering someone, it’s like ministering to the Lord. The other half of it is this is also ministering like the Lord, that you are offering your care and compassion. You are giving of yourself to someone who’s in a situation of need, and you are modeling some the very values that your church talks about from week to week.

I find that the real challenge to face sometimes is in more mundane things of life in whether our faith and what we do in church ever enters those areas. We end up talking about how do you view your work from nine to five. That is a pretty mundane area for a lot of people; they detach what they do from nine to five from what they’re doing in church. Or if they bring it in, it’s just kind of a backpack they have that they throw on and draw out of every now and then, rather than thinking about how that actually works.

I think this is another area where the same kind of thing applies. People go into the hospital, and then it’s like okay, well we’ll give that to the professionals to do. They know how to do it. They do it on a regular basis. They’re used to it. Whatever the myriad of reasons might be. Really, part of our hope in doing this is to encourage people that –no, don’t just leave it to the professionals. Sometimes the most meaningful visits for a person are the people who do come and show they care by their presence. And sometimes –the ones I always like [are] when you walk in and they go, “Well, I never expected you to come to visit me.” I do not know if I know how take that when I walk in the door. But there is something real about that surprise that tells you about people that we’ve almost conditioned ourselves not to expect very much in this area. Let’s talk about how people get in contact with your ministry.

So I was in this seeking phase and hoping to use my education somehow or another. I found a website listing a job for Baylor University Medical Center and Oncology and it told me that the requirement was four units of Clinical Pastoral Education. I had never heard of that before, but I did do a residency in Pastoral Care at Baylor, a one-year residency and I’ve remained there. That is an experience that I wish that every seminarian would have because any of us who pass through this institution and come out on the other side with the DTS stamp. We will have opportunities to do patient care. It will come to our doorsteps.

Eva Bleeker: Certainly, yes, yes. I lift that up because it was such a surprise to me, to discover myself in a place where I was the helper and the minister in incredibly complicated and heart breaking situations. And then to discover that I could do it. I did not see it coming, and yet that is where the Lord very gently walked me by the hand. I wish everyone, every believer could have a chance to test themselves in that kind of setting, because once that we have seen that God never abandons us when we the minister, we are terrified of what we are seeing and our eyes are filled up with images that are terrifying. But then we experience God’s faithfulness under that kind of stress and seeing that kind of sadness. It creates such a powerful dependence on him that it casts out fear.

So what I’d like to say is that I hope that the Lord hears our prayer that we just prayed for you for healing and that you’re around of 20 or 30 more years, whatever. Ultimately, we all have to die; we are all going to stand before God. When that happens to you, like I said I hope it’s in 20 years, 30 years, but when it happens would you be ready? What are you going to tell God when you stand before him? Why should he let you into heaven? That is my transition into that. I get that question a lot and so I thought I’d throw that out as a good way. It works for me with people to transitioning to talking about [it]. Because you don’t want say, “Hey, you know you might die. I need to tell you something bad.” You want to say, “I want you to live and we are all going to die eventually.”

Well, I really do appreciate you all coming in and taking the time to talk to us about patient care. Hopefully we’ve been caring in how we about discussing it. You had been patient with me in dealing with the topic and dealing with my own anxiety so that’s a topic. I hope that what people have heard is the value of good patient care. You can do it, that is something that is capable of being done, and that when it is done with sensitivity, it can really meet a deep personal need, and help lift a person up who is in a very difficult position by giving a sense of you are there to grab them by their hand and walk with them through whatever it is that God is taking them through. Thank you all very much.