Pastoral Care
While in the hospital, patients may be comforted by a visit from a member of Baptist Health's pastoral care staff. Pastoral care staff attends to the spiritual and emotional needs of patients, families and staff, regardless of religious affiliation or non-affiliation.
As part of the healthcare team, chaplains are available to counsel hospital patients and their loved ones and to consult with other healthcare staff. Chaplains may also provide religious resources and assist in keeping religious practices and observances.
Your personal clergyperson, faith community leader or spiritual counselor is always welcome in the hospital. Because of federal privacy laws, you or a family member must contact your church family to tell them you are in the hospital.
When to Contact a Chaplain
Chaplains provide spiritual care and support to patients, families, and staff. Chaplains at Baptist Health Louisville are clinically trained to provide ecumenical and interfaith support to all people.
The chaplain can help you access faith resources, provide spiritual guidance or help you to sort out your thoughts and feelings about what is happening.
The chaplains provide a variety of resources and services that include (but are not limited to):
- Visiting patients and family members on a regular basis
- Consulting with staff
- Responding to special requests and referrals for pastoral care and counseling
- Performing memorial services and religious rites for patients, families and staff
- Providing resources such as Bibles, rosaries, and other religious material
- Administering religious rituals as requested
- Journeying with patients, families, and staff through grief and loss
- Facilitating debriefings after difficult events
- Providing partnership in prayer
- Offering comfort in times of distress and despair
- Assisting with contact of community clergy
- Assisting with the completion of an Advance Directive.
- Listening with respect and without judgment.
- Offering Clinical Pastoral Education and other training in hospital ministry for clergy, seminarians and selected laypersons.
Quiet places are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including a Chapel on the main floor of the 4002 Building, a Prayer Chapel near the gift shop on the hospital's first floor, and Meditation Rooms located on different patient floors in the main hospital.
If you are a patient, family member or friend of a patient, the Pastoral Care team is available to provide for your spiritual and emotional needs. To speak with a chaplain, arrange a visit or to request a spiritual caregiver of a particular faith tradition, call 502.897.8804 from an outside telephone or your cell phone, from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. on weekdays. Call ext. 8804 from a hospital telephone.
On evenings, holidays and weekends, ask your nurse to contact a chaplain. Your clergyperson, faith community leader or spiritual counselor is always welcome in the hospital. Because of federal privacy laws, you or a family member must contact your church family to tell them you are in the hospital.
Giving to Pastoral Care
The department of Pastoral Care is deeply invested in broadening its mission of spiritual support through innovative ministry strategies involving lay and ordained care-givers.
To learn more about how you can make a gift to support this mission, contact Baptist Health Foundation Greater Louisville at [email protected] or call 502.896.7475.