The Hospital Chaplain's Handbook: A Guide for Good Practice

A recent national survey found many serious problems within hospital chaplaincy work with chaplains often feeling marginalised by other staff or failing to understand their role. This practical and informative guide is therefore both timely and will meet and urgent need. Aimed both at newly appointed and experienced chaplains, it aims to be a primary resource offering continuing guidance on: - the role of chaplaincy in the NHS today - the spiritual dimension of illness, injury and health care - ward etiquette, assessing needs, working with other health care professionals - working in specialist areas - maternity, paediatrics, accident & emergency, geriatrics, etc - death, dying and bereavement - beliefs and practices of different faiths - professional practice: ethics, pastoral boundaries, confidentiality, record keeping, clinical audit - caseload management, supervising volunteers, education and training - a large selection of prayers and readings for routine and emergency pastoral situations, anointing and laying on of hands, and much more.

About the Author :
MARK COBB was previously Senior Chaplain and is now ...t the Central Sheffield University Hospitals. He is an honorary lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sheffield and a Research Associate of the Lincoln Theological Institute at Sheffield. He is involved in the training of hospital chaplains and has written a number of academic texts in this area.

Review :
'There is something uplifting in this book for anyone who works with the sick, be they a nurse, doctor, chaplain, counsellor, or remedial therapist.' "This is an important and impressive book, just the thing for those involved in healthcare chaplaincy, and for clergy who visit their people in hospital. It offers vital tools for the job, celebrates good practice in a user-friendly way and helps us all give spiritual care that is patient-centred and helpful to their flourishing. (...) Ministry across the life-course including support for dying and bereaved people is covered impressively. As a hospice chaplain and former hospice nurse too, I like to see how people tackle this area so this is praise indeed! Multifaith issues are given a rightful mention -with Cobb, I feel difference and diversity are to be celebrated as they enrich any community. (...) Go out and buy it now and put its words into flesh in your daily work and encounters." "This handbook is a much needed resource that engages with the health service as it is now and provides information that will be useful not only to hospital Chaplains but all those engaged with Chaplaincy within the health service, as well as those who are involved with hospital Chaplaincy from the community and different faith groups. Here at last is a book which sets the ground rules across the spectrum of hospital Chaplaincy. It is much more than a handbook, more of a practical guide that will affirm many Chaplains and give guidance and insight to others." "This slim book exudes the essence of accumulated practice, procedures and principles appropriate to hospital chaplaincy, a field which has never before been under such scrutiny and subject to such change. (...)It should be required reading for anyone contemplating or practising in healthcare chaplaincy."