WINCHESTER, Va. (AP) - Outside every room in the COVID-19 units at Winchester Medical Center is a door with a large window.
Over the last 10 months, WMC chaplains have often found themselves on the other side of the window talking with COVID patients on a phone.
To avoid transmission of the virus, chaplains cannot visit COVID-19 patient rooms. Neither can family members, unless it is a near-death situation. Visitors are allowed in non-COVID-19 patient rooms, but the number of visitors is limited.
Chaplains sometimes use video calls, or telemedicine, to talk with COVID patients, but associate chaplain Deanna Boynton prefers to speak with them via phone through the window.
“I like that way a little better than the telemedicine, sometimes, because then the person knows I’m here,” she said. “It still has that feeling of physical presence with them.”
At a time when COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths are widespread, WMC chaplains are reminded of the importance of the work they do connecting spiritually with the patients and their families.
When the pandemic first hit the region in March, WMC Staff Chaplain Rob Looney said he spent about a third of his time with COVID-19 patients. Now that there is a much larger wave of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, he spends at least 50% to 60% of his time with COVID-19-related interactions.
Looney noticed there was more overall fear of the unknown with COVID-19 last spring. When hospitalizations and deaths began to spike this winter, he said he personally needed to rely more on his support systems of prayer and spirituality. He said his belief in resurrection, or life after death, is what keeps him going to provide spiritual and emotional care for patients, families and hospital staff.
“I couldn’t do this work if I didn’t believe in the resurrection,” Looney said. “If I believed this life is all there is I couldn’t be helping support people who are dying everyday, supporting their families.”
Looney said COVID-19 has reminded him that he was called to provide this care.
Boynton agreed, saying, “I feel renewed in my calling to care for people.”
While COVID patients and their families have relied on Looney and Boynton during the pandemic, they have relied on the other chaplains for spiritual and emotional support.
Chaplain services are available 24 hours a day at WMC, and there are six full-time chaplains on staff. There also are clinical professionals who care for patients of any or no faiths. Despite increased demand, WMC has not had to add more chaplains during the pandemic.
Boynton and Looney said they’ve had to get creative with their pastoral care by utilizing the nurses and doctors who treat the patients and can enter their rooms.
Those health care workers “have been our physical presence in many ways,” Boynton said.
In one instance, a COVID-19 patient could not hear Boynton over the phone because the patient was on oxygen. So with the help of a nurse, Boynton wrote down a prayer and the nurse read it to the patient in the room as Boynton waved through the window to remind the patient she was there.
Another time, Looney had to tell a COVID-19 patient that a loved one had passed away. Normally, Looney would sit down in the room with the patient and share the sad news. In this instance, Looney had to call the patient while a nurse went in the room to be with the patient.
“It’s kind of the setting which we all had to adjust to,” Looney said. “We’re taught to go and have personal contact with people, sit down, relate to people, trying to understand their needs.”
Family members of COIVD-19 hospital patients are not allowed to visit the patient unless it’s a near-death situation. But they and their pastors can use video calling to speak with the patient.
When a COVID-19 patient is dying, family members and their pastors face the dilemma of saying goodbye in person and possibly exposing themselves to the virus or saying goodbye over the phone or video call from home.
“It’s been heartbreaking to be on the phone with family members who are trying to decide whether to come in or not,” Boynton said. “That’s a horrible situation to be in. It’s an awful decision to have to make, because there are no good answers to that.”
Boynton said chaplains and any employee of WMC are caretakers, whether directly or indirectly, and they all work together.
“We come to work and we pour it all out, and at the end of the shift there is nothing left, because we have poured it all out,” she said.
Both Looney and Boynton have received their COVID-19 vaccinations, and Looney said he’s hopeful that more vaccine availability will improve everyone’s life and alleviate strain on hospitals.
“The light is there at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “I think I’m feeling a lot better about the future now.”
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