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  Health Care Chaplaincy in Latvia

Latvia (one of the three Baltic States) has a population of approx. two million (2,248,000 in 2010), half of which live in the capital city Riga. There are approximately 100 hospitals in our country, only 15 of them (the biggest hospitals) have chaplains.

Since 2005 there has been a professional organization for healthcare chaplaincy in Latvia – the Association of Professional Health Care Chaplaincy (LPVAKA).
Our mission is to develop an open system for interdenominational and interfaith dialogue, which educates, trains and certifies spiritual care-givers in different health care settings. From the beginning we have also taken the initiative to educate society and especially the medical community about relevant issues regarding spiritual dimension of health care, human rights, bioethics, end-of-life and palliative care, etc. organizing local and international conferences (2005, 2006, 2007).

All employed chaplains are paid by hospitals. Some denominations try to support their chaplains by symbolic stipends and opportunities to receive spiritual care and pastoral support as well as to participate in international conferences and workshops. Our Association has always tried to seek additional funding through local and foreign sponsorship to realize most of its projects.

At this moment there are 20 hospital chaplains in Latvia, two of them have successfully completed four units of CPE in USA (Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, USA). Not all working chaplains are members of the Association. The number of the membership of the Association has been constantly changing since its foundation, mainly because of the rather high requirements the Association demands from its members. We have four different member categories – professional chaplain, associate chaplain, affiliate and honorary member – all of these have different requirements, rights and obligations.

Approximately two thirds of all working chaplains have completed clinical training in Latvia based on principles of CPE in USA, however less in- and ex-tensive and much shorter. One of the main issues we feel as problematic now is lack of qualified supervision for working chaplains. We are trying to solve it through collegiate supervisions and holding monthly workshops where we analyse our own verbatims and prepare different relevant presentations ourselves as well as we can, also inviting experts from different disciplines – nurses, physicians, psychologists, theologians, etc.

The Association holds Annual Certification interviews and always invites experts from other countries to serve on the Certification Committee as we have no qualified supervisors in Latvia yet. Nevertheless we try to educate all those who have a vocation to work as chaplains in health care settings. All working chaplains - Association members, whether they are certified or not, have obligation to fulfil the educational programme each year and gather certain amount of points to maintain their member status.

The last couple of years have brought some difficulties, especially due to the economic recession which hit Latvia hard. But there have been successes too. Here are a few highlights:

  1. Chaplaincy is weathering the economic storm, even though some chaplains have been laid off. This came as no surprise, since all hospitals have faced cutbacks. In some instances, entire hospitals have closed.
  2. The National Patients’ Rights Law was finally enacted after years of lobbying by our association. At first our efforts seemed hopeless, as we met strong resistance from several groups of parliament deputies. Long discussions and petitions continued for five years. When the law was finally adopted, we were glad to see that a special paragraph was included which gives every patient the right to spiritual care provided by a health care chaplain
  3. Another hurdle was recently overcome when the legislature adopted laws which sanctioned our trained and certified chaplains as full members of a medical team, same as registered nurses, social workers and physicians . This is a far cry from just a few years ago when no one even knew what a chaplain was! (Remember, no religious persons were allowed in any hospitals here for 50 years!)
  4. Education continues to be our primary purpose as we train and certify new chaplains, and expect all our chaplains to participate in on-going training . In May we held our certification interviews and approved two more candidates. But there is a crying need for more supervisors. So we are open to form a joint project with European chaplaincies and beyond to share in this process.


Dana Kalnina-Zake
President of the Latvia Association of Professional Health Care Chaplaincy
Director of the Spiritual Care Department
Paul Stradins Clinical University Hospital, Riga
LATVIA

 

[September 2010]


 

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