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Health Care Chaplaincy in Switzerland
Marlène Inauen, lic. phil.
Hospital Chaplain, University Hospital, Zurich
For 23 years I worked at the City Hospital Triemli, the last ten years
as head of the Catholic chaplaincy team. During this time I focused
especially on the care of dying cancer patients and on a unit for
gynaecology, birth, social support and children’s home for mothers in
difficulties. Furthermore, in close co-operation with the Protestant team,
I participated in the interdisciplinary bioethics committee and led
different groups of volunteers, especially one, whose members are willing
to spend two nights a month with dying patients.
In January 2008 I changed to the University Hospital of Zurich. Now I
am a member of a team of seven chaplains, and assigned to a unit of
intensive care and neuro-surgery and other units of heart and visceral
surgery. At the University Hospital interdisciplinary work is developed,
the chaplaincy is well integrated. Perceiving the actual needs of
patients, families and staff is important.
The church in the canton of Zurich has made a great effort for
restructuring chaplaincy and for assessing the needs. Now, to every
hospital, also in the countryside, qualified spiritual care givers are
assigned. A leader of all Catholic hospital chaplains has been chosen.
Lay hospital chaplains – men and women – have become a majority, the
few priests being assigned mostly to parishes. The denominational
influence has diminished, many patients have no link to the churches.
For many years I have been a member of the board of the Association of
the Swiss Catholic German-speaking Hospital Chaplains. I participated in
elaborating ecumenical guidelines for Swiss Hospital Chaplaincy. In the
meantime we are concerned with questions of quality and with studies.
Development in the next years:
The impact of organisations gathering members who want to be assisted
with possible suicide is still great. Discussions are widespread in the
newspapers especially when these organisations cause “tourist suicide” –
people coming to Switzerland for assisted death. In Zurich the nursing
homes are allowed to admit organisations for assisted suicide, when a
resident has no longer a home-address (argument of justice for all). The
hospitals demand that they return home. When the University Hospital in
Lausanne defined criteria for assisted suicide within the hospital, the
mass media spread the news emphasizing the new freedom – the same, when
the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMW) defined certain conditions
for a personal decision of a physician to assist suicide.
Palliative care has developed in Switzerland during the last years and
is structured as an interdisciplinary movement, known also by political
authorities. For the future it seems important to me that chaplains get in
closer contact with this movement. Till now only a few chaplains
participate actively within, and psychologists are beginning to cover the
same area. Similar to physicians they use studies to prove the efficiency
of their interventions, e.g. the benefit for life quality.
As chaplains we feel the challenge to begin with studies, too, to
recognize for ourselves and the medical world around us the specific
qualities of our service. Our association has just taken the first steps
thereto. Evidentially we will have to think about questions such as: Is
assessment of hospital chaplains’ work possible? Or will there, within the
management framework, be a quiet move in the direction of hospital
chaplaincy fulfilling all spiritual needs of all spiritual customers? How
does this fit in with God’s grace or the prophetic challenges of the
Gospel?
In other areas, e.g. urgency care, some independent groups begin to
introduce themselves directly to the hospitals. Paid by an annual fee,
they promise assistance in need. Hospital chaplaincy is not always welcome
in this care teams.
In different other areas chaplaincy was once leading, e.g. training
seminaries for assisting the dying and the bereaved. More and more this is
being offered by different groups, independent of faith or church
background.
New answers to real needs were found in ecumenical memorial liturgies,
inviting staff and relatives having lost a dear person in the hospital
during the year, attracting and comforting many people.
Also in the area of pregnancy loss and infant death the churches
(especially women chaplains), together with the hospital staff, have found
an increasing attention and a variety of rituals, liturgies, special
cemeteries to help these families in grief.
[May 2008]
Audrey Kaelin, MA, MTh
Hospital Chaplain, Clinic Hirslanden Zurich
I am a Catholic theologian with Clinical Pastoral
Training. The last two years I was a chaplain at the City Hospital Triemli
Zurich and the Cantonal Hospital Winterthur. In both hospitals I was
responsible for the volunteer group of about 40 members who are willing to
spend two nights a month at the bedside of a patient who does not want to
be alone. This year I started working as a chaplain at the Clinic
Hirslanden Zurich.
Before my studies in Theology I worked as a college
teacher for English and History, which I studied at the University of
Zurich. I grew up bilingual - in the U.S.A. and Switzerland. English is my
mother tongue.
The Clinic Hirslanden Zurich (260 beds) belongs to the
Hirslanden Group of Private Hospitals in Switzerland. I work together with
a Protestant chaplain. We both are employed by our church. We also have
contact with the Jewish community.
My main tasks are
-
pastoral care in accordance with my denomination;
intensive care unit
-
volunteer group of about 10 members who visit patients
during the day
-
courses for nurses and the volunteer group
-
meetings with the chaplains of the five hospitals in the
area as well as with the hospital chaplains in the city of Zurich
Swiss and European network of hospital chaplains
-
Member of the ecumenical cantonal committee since August
2006. The committee prepares the annual convention for
hospital chaplains in canton Zurich.
-
Designated board member of the Association of the Swiss
Catholic German-speaking Hospital Chaplains in August 2008. The board
prepares the annual convention for the German-speaking hospital
chaplains of Switzerland. Successor of Marlène Inauen as representative
of the Association for ENHCC.
[May 2008]
Situation of Protestant German-speaking Health Care Chaplaincy in
Switzerland
Health Care Chaplaincy in Switzerland is structured according to the local
and historical situation. The structures are mostly depending on the
different organisation of the churches and their specific ways of
collaboration with the health care institutes. The Catholic Church is more
homogenous than the very manifold field of the independent around 25
Protestant Churches due to the 26 political unities, called Cantons (Every
Swiss Canton is in fact a little autonomous state for itself with its
constitution, parliament and government.). There are though hardly other
denominations and religious institutions involved.
Hospital Chaplaincy is meanly organized by the churches of the different
cantons. In some cases there are associations of parishes, single
parishes, foundations or the health care institutions themselves that pay
and organize.
Types of Health Care Chaplaincy organisations in CH (examples):
A. Cantonal churches – pay and organize Heath Care Chaplaincy
(infrastructure by the hospital):
Kantonsspital Aarau
Kantonssital Baden
Universitätsspital Basel
Kantonsspital Winthertur (contribution of the political canton through the
church)
Universitätsspital Zürich (contribution of the political canton through
the church)
B. Association of parishes – pay and organize Health Care
Chaplaincy:
Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik Bern
Triemlispital Zürich (contribution of the political canton through the
church)
C. Health care institutes – pay and organize Health Care Chaplaincy
for themselves:
Spital Burgdorf, CHUV Lausanne; Inselspital Berne
D. Foundations – pay and organize it. For example: Station for
Palliative Care Diakonissenwerk Bern, Inselspital Berne There are
combinations and mixtures of the different structures due to the
historical development.
… .
E. Chruches in collaboration with Hospitals are sharing their
responsibility:
St. Gallen, CHUV Lausanne
Association of the Swiss Protestant German speaking Hospital Chaplains
Website:
www.spitalseelsorge.ch
History:
The association of the Swiss Germanspeaking Hospital Chaplains has its
beginnings in 1930. In this year the first “Konferenz Evangelischer
Spitalpfarrer der deutschen Schweiz” took place. Thought as a trial the
involved hospital chaplains decided to go on yet at the first conference.
Structure:
The association consists of about 150 members. Chaplains can join the
association if they work in a health care institution and have an academic
degree in theology and an additional specific formation focused on health
care, spirituality and psychotherapy.
There are different fields of working: general hospitals, psychiatric
clinics, nursing homes and elderly homes, rehabilitation institutes and
homes for handicapped people.
Aims:
Integration of chaplaincy in health care institutions
Formation and training
Lobbying in the churches and in political organisations.
Exchange and motivation (ethics)
Activities:
Organisation of annual meetings
Development of standards and quality systems
Exchange in between the protestant and catholic part of the association
Ecumenical Teamwork
Promotion of the presence of Health Care Chaplaincy in the public and in
institutions
Networking
Communication:
The association is autonomous having relations with others, especially the
Association of Catholic Health Care Chaplains in German Speaking
Switzerland. There are contacts to the different churches and more and
more to the initial academic and post-academic institutes of education.
The contacts of the protestant part of the association to the European
Network of Health care and to the French speaking colleagues are on the
way. The French Speaking have firm relations to the Canadian equals.
Important issues:
To tighten the structure and communication of the association
To develop a common standard of formation
To watch the development of healthcare in Switzerland on the level of
national politics and the politics of the cantonal protestant churches.
A.M. Kerkhoven, Bern, April 2008
Adriaan Maurits Kerkhoven
Hospital Chaplain, University Hospital Insel, Bern, Switzerland (www.insel.ch
)
After completing my studies in Theology and Slavistics I did my practical
formation as a pastor in both French and German. As a double citizen of
the Netherlands and Switzerland I am quite used to multicultural issues. I
profited from working in a bilingual parish. I had the rare possibility to
work as a bilingual pastor in the politically and culturally sensitive
area of Jura mountains, intermediating in between the German and the
French speaking population. I had several NGO activities in Eastern
Europe.
As an protestant pastor I worked in a traditionally catholic, German
speaking area close to the heart of Switzerland. Before entering the
University hospital of Bern I made a special training for chaplains and
worked as a chaplain and director of an NGO for refugees in the Refugee
Welcome Center of Basel.
I’ve been chaplain for the University hospital of Berne for two and a half
years now. Our team cooperates according to the capacity of each member
and his /her origin and experience. The pressure of our emergency service
and the lack of human resources make us work more and more economically. I
am specialised in visceral surgery patients, psychosocial matters and
French speaking clients and their spirituality. I also train a group of
ambitioned volunteers which enriches me a lot.
I’ve become more and more aware and active in the care of the medical
staff and in prevention and conflict work. I’m forming me in systemic and
body-psycho-therapy.
[April 2006]
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