Comment (June 2009)

Bishop's Letter

with Bishop Paul Richardson.

A call by the National Secular Society (NSS) to save £40 million a year by cutting hospital chaplaincies has not received much public support. Given that the total budget of the NHS is over £100 billion a year, the sum spent on chaplains is not that large. The Department of Health has reaffirmed commitment for providing spiritual care in hospitals and the union to which many health care workers belong, UNITE, has voiced its support for chaplains.

Actually NSS may have done chaplains a favour by focussing attention on their work. Ever since I came into the diocese I have been the Adviser for Hospital Chaplains and the role has opened my eyes to the service they provide.

At first sight it might seem that NSS has a case. Most chaplains are Christians while Britain is now home to people of many faiths. A diminishing number of Christians actually practice their religion. People spend shorter periods in hospital and in future it is planned that most treatment will be offered in clinics and patients will only go to hospital for the most serious operation. Instead of being far away from family and friends and their own parish priest, patients are treated nearer to home.

But chaplains are ready to offer appropriate care to people of all faiths. Practising Anglicans are anointed and receive Holy Communion but a good deal of effort is also put into making sure that the followers of other faiths can have copies of their sacred scriptures or access to a representative of their faith if that is their wish.

Often it is chaplains who alert the hospital trust to the religious and cultural needs of patients. Many have produced handbooks setting out the dietary rules, funeral customs or birth ceremonies for the followers of the major faiths.

It is said that only the Chinese army or the Indian railways employ more people than the NHS. Many staff appreciate the ministry of chaplains, whether it be to give them care in times of stress or help them think through tough ethical questions.

The fact that patients are not active church members does not mean that they do not have spiritual needs. Sometimes it is difficult to say whether a problem is spiritual or medical. We need to have a holistic approach to healing. In 2002 the British Medical Journal published a poll result in which people were asked why they visited their doctor. It found that aging, baldness, boredom, bags under the eyes, shyness, insomnia, and nail-biting were all common reasons. For the people concerned, these are real issues. The question is whether they are issues for a doctor or for a counsellor or pastor to provide help.

It is not uncommon for patients to imagine that they are somehow responsible for their illness. Susan Sontag wrote a famous essay ‘Illness as a metaphor’ in which she spoke of the way popular culture attributes cancer to emotional repression, asthma to overdependence and hypersensitivity, and migraine to an inability to deal with anger. Many people believe folk wisdom when it teaches that sickness flows from some inner kind of failure. In such situations, chaplains can help patients come to a new understanding of their illness, one that is more in line with the gospel.

Relatives need help to accept the illness or death of someone they love or to think through such issues as the donation of body parts. In the long run, getting rid of chaplains would probably lead to extra expense rather than saving money.