Hospital chaplains see duties, patient visits increase

This is a very good thing!

It's good to see that the spiritual needs of hospitalized patients are being met but the downside is that hospital chaplains are often overworked, just like nurses. And just like nursing staff, many institutions are decreasing the numbers of their pastoral care staff to cut costs, depending instead on volunteers (lay ministers and licensed clergy alike) and the patients' home pastors to visit.

Additionally, health care chaplains face an extremely competitive job market. My husband has colleagues who are well-educated, experienced hospital chaplains who have had difficulty finding jobs. At one point I seriously considered leaving nursing to go to seminary to become a health care chaplain but my husband, who is very supportive of whatever I do, actually discouraged me because jobs can be so hard to find. He said it would be much easier to find a job as a parish pastor (no, thank you!) than it would be to find one as a health care chaplain. It just seems so counterintuitive to me that as health care needs get more complex and our population ages---thus increasing the need for spiritual care---that it's so difficult for chaplains to find work.

I think it may be a little easier for Catholic chaplains to find jobs because there's a shortage of Catholic priests and nuns. Some institutions do utilize lay Catholics in pastoral care, but I think many are volunteers.