E is for Emergency Room

On September 30, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, ChaplaincyLeave a comment

(This is the fifth in the series ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy.)

It is the beating heart of the hospital. It’s also the only place I’ve ever seen a human heart beating (or struggling to beat) inside someone’s chest, up close and personal. I never know quite what I’m walking into when I get a call to the ER. Chaplains are part of the trauma team, automatically paged in the event of a trauma call. (More on that when we get to the letter T.) But there are many other reasons we get requests to come to the emergency room. It’s one of the units where I spend the most time. My closest friends on staff at the hospital are those who work the ER. (Incidentally, it is more appropriately called the emergency department, since it comprises many rooms. But thanks to those pharmaceutical commercials, when I hear ED I can only think of erectile dysfunction, so it remains the ER for me.)

Here, it’s all about crisis. Almost nobody wakes up in the morning planning on being in the ER later that day. The things that bring people here are sudden and surprising. Continue reading “E is for Emergency Room” →

D is for Death

On September 17, 2014September 17, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy, Grief11 Comments

(This is the fourth in my series, ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy. Read other posts in the series here.)

“He then greeted Death as an old friend and went with him gladly, departing this life as equals.”

Sometimes I forget how different my perspective is from that of most “normal” people. Then my roommate asks me, “How was work last night?” I reply, “Not too bad. Just two deaths and a trauma.” She laughs and I look at her quizzically. “Sorry,” she says, “but you’re the only person I know who would call two deaths in one shift ‘not too bad.’ Your job is so weird.” I guess she has a point. Working in a hospital, encountering death on such a routine basis, is more than a little weird. Continue reading “D is for Death” →

To My Good Friends, Whom I’ve Never Met

On September 13, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Chaplaincy, Gratitude, Love for Neighbor and Self, Women in MinistryLeave a comment

It is rather a strange 21st-century phenomenon. There are people I have never met — and may never meet — in “real life” who know things about me that I haven’t shared even with members of my own family. It all started, for me, with a group on Twitter. I don’t even remember how we all found each other, but somehow a bunch of hospital chaplains from very different religious backgrounds and several different countries started a weekly chat at #SocMedChap, for Social Media Chaplains. We would take turns facilitating the discussion, choosing a topic and throwing out a few different questions for the group to tweet responses. It was eye-opening reading these different perspectives from fellow chaplains, even in 140-character bursts. Continue reading “To My Good Friends, Whom I’ve Never Met” →

ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: C is for Charting

On September 9, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy2 Comments

When I began my first unit of CPE, way back in 2006, I remember the awesome sense of responsibility I had each time I got to document one of my patient visits. I can’t believe we get to write in the patients’ charts, I thought, just like doctors do! Over the next several years and hundreds, maybe thousands of visits, charting became much less exciting. It was part of the routine, something to check off the list of tasks that must be done. “If you didn’t chart it, it didn’t happen,” my CPE supervisor told us. So I charted my visits, over and over and over again. Every job involves paperwork, I suppose, and this is ours. (And yes, when I started out, most of the charting we did was still on paper, writing with an actual pen on a form in a binder. It’s all electronic now.) Continue reading “ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: C is for Charting” →

ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: B is for Bible

On September 5, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy6 Comments

I’m sure it’s not true everywhere, but since the hospital where I work is located pretty securely in the Bible Belt, we chaplains get a lot of requests to bring Bibles to patients. Our office also contains copies of other sacred texts — the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Torah, and more — but rarely do we get a request for one of those. Instead, we regularly get calls from nurses whose patients say they left their Bibles at home when they were hospitalized and would like to borrow one. We have a steady supply of Gideon Bibles, so it’s okay that we almost never get them back. One patient told me not long ago, “I just can’t fall asleep without reading God’s word!” I wondered which parts she wasn’t reading, since I have found a lot in there over the years that would keep me awake nights. Continue reading “ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: B is for Bible” →

ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: A is for Advance Directive

On August 29, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy, Love for Neighbor and Self3 Comments

How do you want to die? Have you ever thought about it? It’s a line of thinking most of us would probably like to avoid, but as a hospital chaplain, my job involves a lot of thinking and talking about death. And in the hospital where I work, chaplains also have conversations with people who are not near death about what they want to happen when they get to that point. Upon check-in, every patient is asked whether they would like information about Advance Directives. If he/she says yes, a chaplain will go visit him/her within the next forty-eight hours, carrying a blank South Carolina healthcare power of attorney form. Where I work, it is one of the basics of what a chaplain does. Continue reading “ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: A is for Advance Directive” →

Hope Is Stupid

On August 23, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Depression, Prayer, Suffering15 Comments

I’ve always considered myself something of an optimist. But lately, it sure is hard to stay one. The other night, I had a very emotional conversation with my roommate, and she told me, “You can’t give up hope.” I blurted out, “But hope is stupid! You just keep wasting time hoping for things that never happen and then you feel like an idiot, and all the realists get to say they told you so.” I was, admittedly, in a pretty bad place, in the midst of all the terrible news in the world and a big disappointment in my personal life. Sometimes I just want to be miserable for a while and not have anyone try to talk me out of it. Continue reading “Hope Is Stupid” →

Depression Is a Disease, and I Have It

On August 12, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Depression, Grief, Love for Neighbor and Self11 Comments

The acting world has lost a legendary performer, a gifted comedian and dramatic actor. And according to early reports, it appears that Robin Williams’ death was the result of suicide. He had been open about his experiences with depression in the past, and that takes courage. Mental illness, and maybe depression in particular, is still stigmatized and misunderstood. (Buzzfeed has this great list of 21 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Depressed that just might help.) I’ve seen it in many of the social media responses to his death. So I feel the need to clear up a few things here, since I have quite a bit of experience from which to draw. I am living with depression myself, and I grew up as a member of a family in which depression and attempts at suicide shadow many of my childhood memories. I know a thing or two about what depression is, and what it isn’t. Continue reading “Depression Is a Disease, and I Have It” →

The Lives Entrusted to Me

On July 31, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Uncategorized5 Comments

I am a caregiver. Always have been one, at least for as long as I can remember. As a child, I took care of our family pets, my younger brother and cousins (until they were too old to let me do so), and my extended family of dolls and stuffed animals. It came as naturally as breathing. When I grew up, I found new outlets for my caregiving instincts, as a babysitter, a teacher, a hospital chaplain, a dog parent. I take those roles very seriously. Continue reading “The Lives Entrusted to Me” →

The Last Thing I Expected

On July 14, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Depression, Gratitude, Love for Neighbor and Self, Peace, Prayer5 Comments

Last week was pretty terrible. It started with a death that was particularly tragic even by the standards of someone who works as a hospital chaplain, and it would have ended with a funeral, except that I could not bring myself to go. So much of my own emotional baggage resurfaced in the wake of this situation that I knew I would be no good as a caregiver if I went. The sadness weighed so heavy on me that I could hardly get out of bed. And then, mercifully, there was the weekend, and a friend’s birthday to celebrate, and unexpected moments of grace. Yesterday morning was good, in real and simple ways that I don’t want to lose. Continue reading “The Last Thing I Expected” →