At hospitals, seemingly routine happenings, viewed in a spiritual light, can be recognized as sacred encounters.
Consider the Miracle of the Donuts. Rev. Cynthia Short, a chaplain at Sisters of Charity Hospital in Buffalo, New York, sets the scene: “I was having a conversation with nurses on a really, really bad day, and we were talking about the possibility of miracles, and one of the nurses said, ‘Yeah, I’d believe in a miracle if donuts showed up.’ And as soon as she said that phrase, a dad walked in and said, ‘I have donuts for you.’”
Rev. Short explained that blessed moments can be serious or light, such as the wished-for but unexpected arrival of donuts. “It’s sacred, but it’s humorous, and kind of like, I think God heard you,” she said.
Sisters of Charity Hospital is part of Buffalo-based Catholic Health system, which invites staff to document these brief, meaningful vignettes on a page of its website. The compilation is meant to capture “the moments when we as caregivers find deeper meaning in our daily work,” in the words of Catholic Health. The stories are shared at management meetings, and board retreats and a sample of them are on the website.
Facilitators
Rev. Geoffrey Hord, another chaplain at Sisters of Charity, believes
chaplains and care providers facilitate divine encounters for patients. “I really feel like it’s about how God intentionally reaches out through us and through those that are working with the patients to show his love and compassion and
kindness,” he said.
He added: “These aren’t prearranged, scheduled type of events. They just happen.”
Here are some of the encounters shared by Catholic Health staff:
- A patient was distraught and inconsolable, struggling with mental illness, refusing treatment, and becoming especially agitated at night. A chaplain entered the patient’s room and saw that a nurse who had struggled all day with the patient was still there after her shift ended. She was at the patient’s bedside softly speaking words of affection and acceptance while stroking the patient’s head. The patient, finally calm, quickly and peacefully fell asleep. The chaplain marveled at this masterful display of compassionate care.
- A young man in need of an organ transplant was in the intensive care unit for weeks. His condition was deteriorating despite all efforts to find a donor. His family brought in a gaming console hoping to give the young man some moments of relief from this ordeal. Hospital protocols are explicit about such nonsecure connections to the internet. The care team led by the chaplain saw an overriding need to reconsider the precautions. An urgent request was elevated through patient care to the hospital president and then to the corporate information technology staff, who found an alternative, to the delight of the struggling patient. Eventually a donor was found. What looked like a tragedy had a happy ending.
- During a snowstorm, managers and associates operated road-clearing equipment, working straight through the blizzard and in zero visibility to keep the access roads open for patients and clinicians. Many associates couldn’t get out of their houses or streets, so a team of drivers with appropriate vehicles was organized to go out and pick up anyone who needed a ride. A baby was delivered in the emergency room. Colleagues pitched in to prepare and serve meals for caregivers who stayed for three days straight. Without this communal effort, the whole enterprise would have shut down.
Dennis Mahaney, Catholic Health’s senior associate for ministry formation and mission integration, said spotlighting the stories lets staff take a step back and view situations from a new perspective.
“Our motto is ‘The right way to care.’ We really believe there are distinct values that we try to operationalize every single day, in every single encounter with every patient and every family,” Mahaney said. “We use those stories to endorse that and encourage that and affirm that. They say this is really who we are and how we do nursing, different from what (patients) might come across at another place.”
The effort to collect the stories through the online portal began before the COVID-19 pandemic, but it really took off in those dire times of isolation and loss.
“People were facing very extreme situations and conditions for giving care,” Mahaney said. “So it got a boost that was really necessary for people who shared the human costs that they were paying. It became really important to hear those stories of how people are being sacred in their encounters and not just being clinical in their encounters.”
Feeling God’s presence
Yvonne Askew, coordinator of faith community nursing,
said that by publishing what might seem like minor interactions, Catholic Health can reveal basic truths about how the hospital operates.
“We thought it would be nice to have those outside encounters that have nothing to do with medicine, something that grows from the relationships we have with the families or the individuals,” she said. “They’re stories that you really don’t write down in your notes, because it’s more of a relationship, that heart-to-heart message.”
For Rev. Barbara Britting, a chaplain at Mercy Hospital of Buffalo, the situations related as sacred moments are a reminder of the divine presence within medical care and in life. “The way in which you write these,” she said, “makes people reflect and think maybe about some of the experiences in their own lives where they may have scratched their own heads.”
Rev. Short tied the encounters to the hospital’s larger mission. “We are the healing hands of Jesus, and healing comes in all different forms,” she said. “It’s not just medical.”
She recalled an encounter with a family that included a son who was distressed that his mother was dying. “He wanted specific scriptures read, and he’d throw out a phrase and I’d have to find the passage for him,” she said. “I’d pray that specific prayer, and he said, ‘This was her favorite.’ And then as we were all praying it, she lifted herself up and her spirit left.”
Rev. Short said everyone in the patient’s room was astounded. “You knew you were in a holy moment there, as she was leaving and we were praying her favorite scripture. So peaceful. It was beautiful,” the chaplain said. “Not only was it an honor to be there, but how wonderful for that family to have seen that moment. It was an extraordinary moment, not only for me as a chaplain but for that family to walk away and say, ‘That felt good. It was a good homegoing.’”