Christine Mao
Chaplain at Prince of Wales Hospital
What do you love about your role as Hospital Chaplain?
I appreciate that the doors are still open for people of faith to be included in someone’s health care. Being able to walk around with this badge on that clearly states I am a spiritual carer is a huge privilege. And a serious responsibility.
Offering spiritual and pastoral care to patients in moments of vulnerability and weakness, times of heightened fear, uncertainty, isolation, and pain – this is to be done with respect, compassion and deep care. If a patient invites me to sit down by their bedside, I love being able to really listen to their stories, to try to hear the emotions and feelings and to provide my full attention and energy to what is being shared.
Sometimes people share things that are extremely heartbreaking and intensely painful. It might be related to their health challenge – but it might have nothing to do with the presenting illness. Because they’ve had time to reflect on their lives – this might bring up other memories or experiences. Chaplains are given the precious opportunity to sit with another in their pit of despair, to minister Christ’s presence and care, to show the patient that they are seen, and heard and held.
These pastoral conversations are what I love most. I don’t usually get to see the resolution or have any answers or anything specific to “do”. But, being there to create a space of respect and showing interest and empathy – just as God has done to us – turning up into this world in flesh and walked alongside people who are hurting, wounded, forgotten, feeling helpless and in despair – I think this is the best aspect of chaplaincy – embodying God’s compassion and love…being God with “skin on” to patients. Showing that God is present, He cares and He never forgets His people.
"Chaplains are given the precious opportunity to sit with another in their pit of despair, to minister Christ’s presence and care, to show the patient that they are seen, and heard and held."
What impact do chaplains have in the hospital and why is this important?
There are few other people employed in the hospital to just listen and turn up. We don’t have a strict agenda and list of patients that we must attend to each day. So the greatest impact that chaplains have is to first turn up and listen well. If you’ve ever been in hospital there are lots of people telling you what to do, when to eat, when to go to sleep. Lots of stuff being done to you. But chaplains aren’t there to do that. So the impact we make is to give the patient the choice to engage in conversations that aren’t purely focused on their illness and medical side.
Chaplains represent that there is more to healing than just the physical. The very presence of a chaplain signals that wholistic care is important – talking about the spiritual and big existential questions is valuable.
And specifically, for Christian chaplains, we go into these quiet, hidden spaces not alone. We have the Spirit. We are able to pray for the staff and the patients and carers. This is unique and such a different perspective from any other profession that will be in the hospital.
As for the impact – I really can’t say how each individual patient I have visited is impacted by my visiting them because I often just see them once.
But if I imagine the removal of all chaplains from public institutions there would be an absence of acknowledging the spiritual dimension of humans. The simple presence of a chaplain adds meaning and hope and purpose that reaches beyond human interventions.
Chaplains currently are invited into discussions about palliative care or end of life care or ethics or asked to lead memorial services or support nursing staff who are burdened with the strains and pressures of many deaths on their wards or be with grieving families or rejoice with those who are healed or pray for those who are anxious about results or surgery. These are valuable moments for chaplains to be present.
