Hospice chaplain cares for patients at end of life
Hospice care focuses on the quality of life for people with terminal illnesses. And while most people think of nurses when they think of hospice care, chaplains are also essential members of hospice teams, providing emotional and spiritual support for patients and their loved ones.
Mark Lafferty of Centerville became a minister 33 years ago, after he had a spiritual experience while serving in the Navy. He left Navy service after four and a half years and decided to go to college and then seminary school.
“After my spiritual experience, I became interested in Christian theology and church involvement,” Lafferty said. “People kept encouraging me to try to explore different areas of church ministry.”
As a child growing up in Michigan, Lafferty said he had a very nominal religious background and never thought he’d end up going into the clergy. But after seminary, he became a pastor with the Christian Missionary Alliance where he met missionaries who had traveled the world helping others.
“They made a real impression on me,” Lafferty said. “They were serious about their faith and were living it. I was inspired.”
Eventually Lafferty found his way to a church in New York and then moved to Tiffin, Ohio, and later to Marshfield, Wisconsin, where he remained for 20 years. While in New York, he volunteered for a hospice program for the first time.
“I found this to be very meaningful, though it was completely new to me,” he said.
Lafferty and his wife, Scharme, have four children, one of whom lives in the Dayton area. After what Lafferty describes as several years of “Covid-related stress and challenges,” he and his wife decided they needed a change. They moved to Centerville a year ago, thinking they would retire there.
“I was retired for two months — from November of last year to the beginning of January this year,” Lafferty said. “Then I saw a job for at Crossroads Hospice that seemed perfect for me.”
During those two months, Lafferty tried full-time retirement, but said he didn’t like not working. He felt called to apply for the chaplain position at Crossroads.
“My last few years in Wisconsin, I was doing some training and was thinking I would continue doing some kind of chaplaincy after church retirement,” Lafferty said.
In January 2022, Lafferty began his new role as a hospice chaplain.
Crossroads Chaplain Team Coordinator Jim Robinson said chaplains provide tremendous spiritual and emotional support to both patients and families as they come to terms with their diagnoses and end-of-life experiences.
“Contrary to what some may believe, the duties of chaplain go far beyond simply joining patients in prayer,” Robinson said.
Crossroads Hospice chaplains are part of a team of caregivers. This team includes social workers and medical professionals who meet with the patient and family when they are new to the program and regularly afterward.
“During that initial visit, we ask them if they would like a chaplain to visit,” Lafferty said. “We visit once or twice a month, and I think of it as caring for the person’s soul while the nurses take care of the physical needs.”
This includes patients and families who may or may not practice any specific religion. Lafferty said that in his experience, most people welcome someone coming to pray with them, answer questions about dying and about what happens afterward.
“Sometimes they have situations in their families they want to talk about,” Lafferty said. “They want confidentiality, and it might be weighing on them.”
Hospice chaplains can help lift those burdens from dying patients so they can find peace at the end of their lives.
Crossroads chaplains also help provide funeral and memorial service planning, if patients and families don’t have a particular church home or clergy they trust.
“We meet a lot of people who used to attend church; and then as they age or become ill and during COVID, a lot of people have gotten disconnected from their churches,” Lafferty said.
If patients and families have a church home or group, hospice chaplains can help coordinate with them, so they become part of the official care team.
But one of the most important things chaplains do is offer to be present as a patient is near
death, just to ensure no one dies alone.
“We do everything we can to make sure someone is there to help them as they transition,” Lafferty said.
And while this job may often be difficult, Lafferty said the rewards are great, as families often write to him afterward to express gratitude for the care he provided to their loved ones.
“You learn so much from this work, and it’s rewarding because you are really helping people,” Lafferty said. “I’ve gained so much education about people and life and the things that are important and that matter most.”