European Network of Health Care Chaplaincy

  Health Care Chaplaincy in Austria

• Protestant health Care Chaplaincy (A.E.K.Ö)
• Austrian Association of Catholic Hospital Chaplaincy
• 2002 Standards Document in German

Protestant Health Care Chaplaincy  (A.E.K.Ö)

Ulrike Frank-Schlamberger: 

I am a pastor working as health care chaplain in the General Hospital of Vienna (AKH) and I am in charge of the Protestant hospital chaplaincy in Vienna. My big task in the last 2 years was to plan a CPE program for Austria with European standards. This challenge was a very good ecumenical experience with the Roman Catholic Church experts.

Besides that I am in charge of the training and qualification of volunteers.

Health Care Chaplaincy in the Protestant Church
Hospital Chaplaincy is organised, authorised and mostly also paid by the churches. The hospitals support the chaplaincy by providing the infrastructure: chapel, office, telephone, …

Qualification for chaplains
Ordained and “lay” persons work as hospital chaplains. They have to take part in Clinical Pastoral Training or something adequate. Until recently we had 2 training courses in Austria: one in Salzburg and one in Vienna, some people did their training in CPE in Germany. Now we hope that with 2009 the first official “CPE Austria” will start.
As we work with volunteers as well, we train them by giving them basic information in theology, pastoral care and psychological aspects of communication etc.
Hospital chaplains are experienced as innovative women and men, well trained and professional in their work.

Developments in the next 5 years

The churches are more and more running out of money – we try to find new models of employment, for example by the hospitals.
We are aware that spiritual and psychological care is needed even more these days. This means for us, that we have to learn to cooperate with other professions working with patients.
The ecumenical contacts differ: in some hospitals and parts of Austria we work together in others we lack ecumenical cooperation. It is not always easy going between a majority and a minority church.
Besides that we think it is a new challenge to find ways of cooperation with other religious and cultural traditions; for example Muslims
We have the urgent need of specialisation in different working areas: especially geriatric care. A very important field of cooperation is hospice. But again, we are a minority church and can’t work everywhere.

[May 2008]

Top

Dr Anna Seyfried

Functions:

• Manager of the department “Pastoral Care with people living in difficult situations”
• Roman Catholic spiritual caregiver in a public hospital at Linz
• Responsible of the “Roman Catholic Health care chaplaincy” in Upper Austria (22 hospitals)
• Manager of the “Austrian association of the catholic hospital chaplaincy”

My main tasks are:

• organisation of symposiums and annual meetings; the development of the quality of chaplaincy care;
• professional training for chaplains;
• development of standards and quality systems;
• enabling training for spiritual caregivers in contact with institutes for education;
• solving problems in working affairs;
• working on collective employment conditions together with the different managers of the hospitals

On the staff of “Roman Catholic Health care chaplaincy” are working “lay persons” (theologians), priests, deacons and volunteers. Most of them have undertaken a special training (clinic pastoral care). We also can find various statues of ecumenical cooperation: How ever I’m lucky to cooperate with protestant colleagues on the base of common symposiums and further vocational trainings. Actually we develop a new “clinic pastoral training” for catholic and protestant chaplains in Austria

There are rather different frameworks for “Roman Catholic Health care chaplaincy” in Austria. So we can find pastoral workers who are paid and employed by the dioceses, others are paid by hospital management and employed by the dioceses and some of them are employed and paid by the hospital management.

In the future probably it will be important for the Health care chaplaincy in Austria whether we try to integrate chaplaincy into health care. At the moment we are discussing how the departments of chaplaincy should be positioned in the organisation of the hospital. More and more we find already some models of integration in the structure of ecclesiastical hospitals.

Top

[May 2008]