One of your church members is in the hospital, scheduled for surgery, so you add a hospital visit to your list of things to do for the day. It may seem to you to be simply a part of your pastoral routine. You have made hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such calls. But for the patient, soon to be under the surgeon's knife, the situation is anything but routine.
When you walk into the hospital room, is it with the attitude of a professional who is following the agenda for the day? Are your thoughts on your role—the usual formula of comforting words, Scripture text, and prayer before making your exit and going on to the next item on your "to do" list? Or do you see yourself as a representative of the Saviour with the primary concern of discovering and meeting this individual's specific needs?
As a pastor, you must continually combat the imperceptible drift toward professionalism while remaining a professional. How may one successfully accomplish such a role in the hospital setting? The answer lies in making the needs of the patient paramount and in being alert to ascertain what those needs are.
As you walk into the patient's room, your eyes can tell you a great deal about what he is experiencing, if you learn to interpret the signs. Flowers, cards, or letters are evidence that family or friends are keeping in touch and providing support. Reading material can indicate that the patient's mind is active and involved with life, as well as the direction of this activity. Rumpled, disorderly bedclothes usually indicate restlessness and anxiety, often verified by body language, especially frequent hand and feet movement.
Passive listening will normally tell you the facts about the patient. But active listening will allow you to understand not only what a person says but what he means and how he feels. It takes skill to develop a relationship in which the patient will trust you sufficiently to risk sharing the feelings he is experiencing. To thus expose himself makes him vulnerable. But when he believes that you understand what he is experiencing, it is easier for him to admit his concerns freely. The more you show understanding, the easier it becomes for him to open up.
Because the person in the hospital often experiences pain, fear, and emotional hurt, you must concentrate on the feelings of the patient, as well as his words. While the person is describing the facts of his illness or problem, listen actively by giving your attention to the feelings behind this expression of the facts. But do more than this. Let the patient know you understand his feelings. Thus you will encourage the continued flow.
Partly because our society has for many years minimized feelings, many people are not able to deal with them. Often they are unaware of their real feelings even when under the pressure of them. Therefore, it is especially important for one who is experiencing hurt or fear to get in touch with his feelings and deal with them, so that he need not give in to them. The patient needs to be able to talk about how he feels to someone who accepts him, who is sensitive to the implications of what is said, and who gives the impression that it is all right to have feelings—even negative ones. Only when this is done can the patient resolve his feelings and integrate them with his behavior. Then, and only then, are his positive feelings free to take over.
For this reason it is vitally important for the pastor to ask, "Why do I go to the hospital? Do I go because the patient has a need or because I have a need?" This question may seem elementary, but if the pastor makes a hospital visit in order to care for his own need to read Scripture and pray with the patient, it is possible that he may miss that which is important to the patient. Don't misunderstand. The objection is not to Scripture and prayer; the question is one of when and why. There may be times when the patient's needs require some thing else. If the minister, in his imperception, follows his own agenda to the exclusion of that of the one he visits, of what value is his visit to that person?
Thus the pastor should try to deter mine what the patient needs and expects from his visit. Perhaps he can best answer that question by first looking at what the patient does not expect or need.
Ordinarily he does not need long visits. He does not need medical advice from the pastor. He does not need false hope. It is easy to say, "Everything is going to turn out all right," or, "You are going to come through this with flying colors." But do you really know this to be true? When you do not know what his prognosis is, you should not guess. Such reassurance seldom assures the patient anyway. He has to gain his own victory over his fears and doubts.
The patient may be suffering because he is wondering whether his medical problem is a result of his misdeeds. Condemnation of any kind will likely keep him from sharing this fear with you, thus denying you the opportunity to help him obtain forgiveness. Therefore, he neither needs or expects judgment, moralizing, or preaching.
The individual needs the right to ex press feelings of fear, anxiety, guilt, resentment, anger, or loneliness without being judged or condemned. He needs the assurance that God loves him regardless of what he is feeling.
He needs the kind of empathy that says, "I hear what you are saying." Even if you admit, "I don't exactly understand because I have never been there," he still knows you heard, and care, and this is important to him. He does not want you to ooze with sympathy; he just wants understanding. He does not want to hear all about every body else's problems; he just wants you to hear his.
Although he may have problems, he does not need you to hand him the solutions. It will not help for you to give him the answers, but he does need the sup port that will enable him to find his own solutions. He may need to be challenged to do so. He may need your help in assessing the problems he describes. He may also need your help in exploring alternate solutions, but ideally you should act as the agent to draw alternatives from him, rather than originating them yourself. Often it takes much longer to give this kind of help, perhaps many visits. But the results will probably be long-lasting and carry over into other areas of the patient's life.
One patient said, "I need to get the feeling that my pastor is cooperating with the Lord in my best interest. I hope for a complete recovery, but if that is not the Lord's will, I would expect my pas tor to help me accept the fact. I would expect him in particular to spend some time with me and help me with the pain of separation. Also I would want him to help me to concentrate on the fact that Jesus has gone before me and is preparing a place for me."
This is the time when Scripture and prayer is most helpful. How beautiful is the Scripture that speaks to the specific anxiety of a man's heart, and how supportive is the prayer that tells God about the personal struggle a man is going through! The patient needs you to tell God he wants to have greater faith, when this is his experience. He wants your prayer if you will talk to God about him, and not repeat a prayer prepared for everybody else. He wants you to ask for God's guidance during and after the surgery. He wants to know you are his advocate, and that you will stand behind him. To pray this kind of prayer, you first need to tune in to him. Yet, too often, the pastor finds it much easier to escape prematurely from the fear, the hurt, the anger, and the pain of the patient to the impersonal safety of Scripture and prayer.
When a person is anticipating surgery, fear is often the predominant emotion. Since fear comes in many forms, it is important to discover just what particular fear the patient has. If you assume you know, and respond to what you guess his fear to be, you may add to the anxiety of the patient by providing an other fear for him to worry about. Try to be sensitive and relaxed enough for the patient to respond to your mood. He will usually reveal the fears he has. If he insists, "I'm not afraid," this may be an accurate description of his feelings, or he may be saying, "I'm trying hard not to be afraid." Body language may be your best clue of his true meaning.
Contrary to what the patient may ask, he does not need the pastor to agree with his fears. What he needs is someone to help him define and face them. If you can help him do this, the battle is half won. Even though he will have to finish by himself, he likely will.
In helping an individual face fear, the first step is to clarify and define the fear. The patient needs to describe his fear as clearly as he is able, and then to look at it objectively—without emotion. Do not try to talk him out of his fear; it doesn't work. He needs to know it is natural to be afraid, but he also needs to look at the facts. Ask him whether his doctor has actually suggested that the things he fears are likely to happen. You may want to ask whether he knows any other reason why they might happen. If the patient bases his fear on something that has happened to someone else, you may in quire whether the circumstances are the same in each case. Usually they are not. At some point the person is ready to decide that his fear is unreasonable, but he still needs to know that some fear is usually present. The next step is to face the fear by deciding to go ahead with the thing he is afraid to do.
Often before surgery, his anxiety focuses on the anesthesia. He may be afraid that under its influence he will say something foolish or vulgar, or may tell his secrets, or, worst of all, do some thing that is totally foreign to his self-image that would put him in a bad light.
His fear may center in his concern of losing control of himself. The religious person who is making a tremendous effort to "be good" is particularly reluctant to turn the control of himself over to another. There is also the fear of the unknown. He does not know what to expect, perhaps because he has not been told. In this case, encourage him to ask his nurse or doctor. If he has never experienced anything like this before, a certain amount of apprehension will re main regardless of what you do.
He may say, "I might not wake up," or, "I'm not ready to die." If the patient is afraid to die, it helps to take a look at death. Somewhere in the conversation you might ask, "What does death mean to you?" The conversation might lead to your asking, "What would you need to do to be ready to die? Have you done these things?"
The patient may have a number of general fears. His fear of pain may make him wonder whether he can handle it. He may be concerned about the family finances. A mother will often be concerned about whether her children will be well cared for while she is out of the home. The patient may fear that the doctor will make a mistake, or he might express the fear that he doesn't know what the doctor will find during the surgery. He may or may not be talking about the possibility of cancer. If he is, encourage him to talk about what cancer means to him. He may wonder whether he will ever be a whole person again, whether he will be the same.
Whatever the fear, if you, as Christ's representative, can assist the person to face it, you will be greatly appreciated. If you can avoid the impersonality of professionalism and lead someone to strengthen his faith to lay hold of God, the results of your ministry will extend into eternity.
