Here’s a video of a conversation I had with one of the members of St Mary’s last Sunday. Andy Winter was chatting to me about the way treatment and perception of HIV has changed over the years. We talked about new PrEP medicines, reducing stigma and the extraordinary news that the epidemic could be ended by 2030.
Take a look here:
Are you really PAID by the NHS? Money that could pay for a nurse or a physiotherapist? You must be tremendously confident that your faith is meaningful if you are! I’m not sure if I envy that or not…
In most hospitals, there are hospital chapels and hospital chaplains. It isn’t a new or shocking thing. My experience has been that most of them do very good work, and are available for anyone from any religion who wishes to speak to them and don’t force themselves on the ones who prefer not to. The practice of medicine is about a lot more than just the physical, especially in a cancer hospital, and unless you want doctors to be the ones offering spiritual support (I don’t think I’d be that good at it, I don’t have enough hours in the day as it is, and, as my patients have to see me whether they subscribe to my religion or not, I think it can be inappropriate and intrusive), I’m quite happy for the NHS to pay someone who specialises in the area of spiritual support to fulfill that very real need.
– Beth, who works for the NHS
Thank you Beth. I couldn’t have put it better.
– Ruth, whose sister died in hospital not all that long ago
Agree with Beth, and …
is this really a world where the big ideas about birth, death, love, hate, forgiveness, suffering should not be discussed? Where one can live and suffer and give birth and die without thinking about them? does not the very suggestion this should be so impoverish us every bit as much as as suffering and death can? And is certainty in any way necessary to enter such a discussion?
Interesting! My original question was about confidence… here’s one to test it a little more, today there’s a headline in the Guardian:
” NHS to axe cancer and heart experts. Charities and doctors warn that treatment of killer diseases will suffer as number of teams is cut”
Yet according to the BBC the NHS is spending £40 million per annum on chaplains!
Which means that chaplains must be VERY confident that this money is better spent on talk than treatment, or I’m sure they wouldn’t take it. Would they?
By the way I was a nurse at Gartnavel Royal for many years. Never saw hide nor hair of the chaplain up there, although apparently, there was one!
What an excellent blog John has. Most interesting. Thanks for the link.
Um – as one with friends and family in the NHS I wonder how much of the money spent in the last weeks of a terminally-ill person’s life is well spent. Sometimes a great deal is spent on treatments which are hugely unpleasant and prolong life by weeks or months at best. I made a decision years ago that when (and given family history when is more likely than if) I find myself there I will ask very searching questions.
I won’t answer for John, but for myself… I am ‘tremendously confident’ that examining the questions around my faith is ‘meaningful’ and indeed essential. That is not at all the same thing as being sure my beliefs are right.
We have what is supposed to be a Health Service – something which promotes well-being. People are more complex than their conditions – and we all die one day. A great deal of money is spend on all kinds of things which make the lives of those in hospital better, because people cannot get through life-crises on medicine alone.
I think that characterising cancer and heart disease treatment as terminal care is extremely depressing, and perhaps fifty years out of date. And the health service is there to promote well-being? I don’t think so, I think it’s to provide medical and para-medical care during illness..
Not that I don’t love chatting to a minister of religion, anytime. I do! But not on the NHS budget please! UNLESS…
Unless it’s been demonstrated in properly designed clinical trials that a visit from the chaplain is worth the cash. That’s the test for all the other expensive treatments we’re paying for!
I did not describe cancer and heart conditions as terminal. However I do expect to die one day.
I’m not sure that the benefits to a patient from a visit from the chaplain could be usefully or accurately measured by ‘properly designed clinical trials’…. from a personal viewpoint I know that the last twelve weeks of my sister’s life (a young 62 year old with cancer and desperate to live) were made more bearable by the chaplain’s ability to help her cope with the sullen, spitefulness of too many of her nurses.
I wonder what is the first thought that comes into your head when you open an invitation and find yourself invited to a wedding. Do you say a wee prayer of thanksgiving for the couple? Maybe you do. Do you rejoice that two people have discovered that they love one another and give thanks for…
Just back from the Consecration of the new Bishop of Brechin in Dundee. Brechin may be one of the smaller dioceses in the Scottish Episcopal church but they like their pomp. Where else would the clergy procession have begun in the Council Chamber and made its way to the Cathedral accompanied by flying thurible and…
Off to Brechin for the consecration of the Diocese of Brechin’s new bishop. Will report later. The Diocese of Brechin was famously referred to by one of its former bishops as The Flagship Diocese of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Which only makes one wonder about the most appropriate sobriquets for the other six, doesn’t it?
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