A Hospital Chaplain’s Guide to Better Listening

I’m often asked what it is that healthcare chaplains actually do. Sometimes the assumption, even among other hospital disciplines, is that we pray with people, talk about God and occasionally do rituals. Explicitly religious stuff. Most chaplains are trained to handle those tasks, of course, but that’s not the core of what we do. Spirituality is about more than religion, and most of the time, good spiritual care is about providing compassionate presence and active, attentive listening. This is much harder than it sounds. In our culture, conversation tends to be transactional. We’re seeking to convey something or to get needed information. So, we talk over one another. We argue. We ignore seemingly irrelevant details. We change the subject. Often, we’re just waiting for our turn to speak, using the time when our conversation partner is talking to formulate what we want to say next. <a href="https://medium.com/better-humans/a-hospital-chaplains-guide-to-better-listening-1a4b0819525b">Click Here</a>