- April 19, 2024
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There’s more to health and well-being than just the body and the mind.
There’s the spirit — something we can’t see but surely feel. Something that you can’t reveal with an MRI or X-ray but often needs healing or recovery.
“I feel like we need somebody that helps us connect to our feelings, our heart, our faith and what’s in our soul,” said Winter Park Memorial Hospital Senior Chaplain Donna Burske. “As our patients process unexpected diagnosis or unexpected loss of a baby or a sudden loss of a parent, what is life without our soul?”
Burske is one of seven chaplains at the hospital. Instead of healing broken bones and curing diseases, she treats grief and loneliness. She tries to encourage hope and the will to keep fighting.
But Burske wasn’t always a chaplain. Prior to 2002, she was working in the business development side of the hospital — a time she calls her “previous life.” It was that year that she felt a desire to do something more meaningful in her work.
She said it was her 18-month fight with cancer that gave her this renewed perspective.
“I had a moment driven by things going on in my life when I realized work was fine, supporting me and I enjoyed it, but there wasn’t a lot of meaning,” Burske said. “I knew my heart was with people.”
After earning a new master’s degree, logging 1,600 supervised clinical hours, receiving a minister certification and completing clinical training, she became a chaplain.
It’s a job that sometimes is more about listening than knowing what to say, Burske said. A chaplain ultimately wants a patient to find whatever consolation that brings them peace and to get through to them in whatever way is most meaningful, she said.
“When you spend some time with someone and they came hopeless and I see even just a touch of hope dawn, it’s very fulfilling,” Burske said. “I’m trying to help them access what’s underneath, the dissonance underneath the story. At the same time, I help them find and notice whatever brings them meaning. I hope it’s God. Everyone has something inside them that reaches for the divine.”
In hospitals, people can reach their highest highs and their lowest lows. In no area of the hospital could this be more true than at the Dr. P. Phillips Baby Place and the neonatal intensive care unit.
In one room, a mother may be meeting a healthy baby for the first time. Down the hall, another mother could be suffering the shattering blow of losing a child.
Chaplain Lucile Wiseman spends most of her time here. She had consoled a family who lost a little one just hours ago, blessing the spirit of that child that resides somewhere we cannot see or fully understand.
“You have a whole gamut of emotions,” Wiseman said. “My day is varied but very meaningful.”
Winter Park Memorial Hospital has seen the impact of pastoral care. A survey answered by patients following their stay at the hospital asked if their emotional and spiritual needs were being met. Previously, the scores were low — in the 50% range. But starting in January, the hospital began a new program in which the chaplains made rounds with the nurse leader in each unit three times a week, integrating spirituality as the nurse was assessing the care of patients.
The average spiritual health of patients has been up by 40 points ever since.
It’s not only patients but also staff members who receive pastoral care, Burske said.
“I came in this morning knowing that in one of our patient beds is a longtime employee (who is) dying today,” she said. “I drove in this morning realizing I need to reach out to everyone she worked with.”
The chaplains sometimes even find themselves on the receiving end of a blessing or a realization. For Burske, the healing is mutual, and the faces of countless patients run through her mind — in particular an older man in palliative care over 10 years ago, and his perspective on life in his final days.
She still sees him.
“I could not articulate for you why, but his enthusiasm for life as he was dying … I think about it all the time,” Burske said.
