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Pastoral care – Taking care of your spiritual well-being

How we see ourselves
Our pastoral care service helps victims deal with the crisis, which is triggered by an accident or illness and which jeopardises the structure of their personal or family life. We introduce ourselves during our initial contact (which may involve a number of meetings). This is generally initiated by us. We take note of the circumstances of the patients and his or her relatives and we try to ascertain what the needs of the people affected are.

Therefore, we provide differentiated support:

• Helping you along an extremely difficult path
• Sharing very contradictory feelings
• Expressing fears, doubts and anxieties
• Religious assistance in prayer
• Offer to organise ritual and sacramental support
• Regular chats to help you deal with the existential, religious crisis
• Support on paths through life, with saying goodbye and death
   

Our remit
Our role and key duty of providing pastoral care, i.e. support for patients in the SPC, are pivotal to a wide range of duties and regular activities which underpin and interconnect our work in the clinic.

Support is provided in the following areas, among others:

• In the conflicting emotions of crisis and sadness (expressing your emotions).
• Physical, emotional and spiritual support in grappling with a renewed understanding of yourself as a woman or a man in a partnership or in a family.
• Seeking a possible sense, your own answers to the new challenge facing you in life.
• Experiencing hope and break-up, goodbye and separation, death and a new beginning.
• Working together to formulate personal, spiritual and religious forms of expression.

Duties and regular activities:

• Personal support for patients, relatives and staff
• Prayer, sacrament and church services
• Talking about life and faith
• Visiting service (initial/further training, coordinating deployments with 14 voluntary visitors)
• Involvement on boards and projects at the clinic (initial/further training, interdisciplinary cooperation, guided tours)
• PR work in and outside the clinic
   

Our job profile
We have the equivalent of one and a half full-time jobs available for pastoral care in the SPC, shared equally between the Protestant minister and the Catholic chaplain. They carry out this pastoral work in the clinic in consultation with their church leadership and the executive board of the clinic.
Day-to-day work in practice is carried out in close cooperation with the social advice team, the psychological counselling service, as well as with the nursing management on the wards.
 

Personal and specialist competence:
We attach great importance to vocational qualifications for pastoral care in the clinic: After completing their studies in theology, they are required to have many years vocational experience, as well as initial and further training, with specific job-related areas of specialisation:  pastoral care and clinical pastoral training, solution-based dialogue and ethical decision-making in healthcare have expanded our range of competences considerably.