Not a romance, just the job keeping me up. Chaplaining is not for the faint of heart. Among other duties, as Managing Chaplain I am on 24/7/365 back-up call for the on-call system at Crouse. If the on-call person does not respond, the Operators call me. Last night, it was at 2:36 am (thank you, cell phone). This morning, I wasn't called, but the agonies of the kerfuffle over the previous night's on-call glitch woke me way too early. Basically, it was a perfect storm of on-call mishaps: the priest who was supposed to be on-call, didn't respond. So the Operators called me, which is what they are supposed to do. It was a Roman Catholic need, and I asked the Operator to call a priest who has been so good as to help out in the past, even when he wasn't on duty. I stayed up long enough to make sure he had responded by calling in, and went back to bed. But that was when the trouble started. In short, the need of the family at that time was emotional, not sacramental, and the priest declined to actually come in -- having, in fact, already spent over an hour with the same family (and dying patient, providing for all of the end-of-life sacramental sacramental needs), from 10 to 11 pm (he had been on call until midnight), and needing to be able to get up and do mass in the morning, plus do a major funeral the next day. The family was furious, the staff were upset, and all the anger came spilling out over email in the morning. Sigh. How to fix a system that relies on Roman Catholic priests who are already so overworked it's a miracle they are not all dying of heart attacks? How to make sure the staff feel supported in their work of taking care of family members when a patient dies?
AuthorKate Lufkin Day is a writer, Episcopal priest and hospital chaplain based in Syracuse, NY. Archives
June 2019
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