Pastoral Care

The Pastoral Care department at Saint Peter's University Hospital offers emotional and spiritual support to patients and families. As part of the health care team, we offer spiritual care to all, regardless of religious or cultural tradition. Through gentle presence and prayerful encounter, we celebrate your hopes and joys, join in calming your fears and anxieties during your hospital stay, and search with you for deeper meanings during life's crises.

Pastoral Care can help:

  • When you need someone to listen to and support you
  • When you or your family feels stress, anxiety, uncertainty, grief, anger or sadness
  • When you need encouragement
  • When you feel alone and lonely
  • When you want to talk about spiritual concerns or pray with someone
  • When you feel you are losing control
  • When you need help to continue religious practices during your hospital stay
  • When you need bereavement support
  • When you need to consult about an advance directive or living will or about end-of-life and ethical issues.

Our chaplaincy services are provided by professional certified chaplains for patients and families of all religions. They are assisted by:

  • Bikur Cholim
  • Clergy visitors from the Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Protestant faiths
  • Eucharistic ministers
  • Trained chaplains' assistants and Pastoral Care visitors.

The chaplains of the Pastoral Care Department are professionals, educated and certified to offer spiritual and emotional support to people of all faiths. Our pastoral care professionals will:

  • Visit you on admission and be available to you and your family during your stay
  • Contact your minister, priest, rabbi, imam or spiritual leader, if requested
  • Offer prayer, sacraments, and other spiritual support
  • Distribute the Eucharist daily, if requested
  • Provide support with making difficult decisions, if needed
  • Assist with completion of your advance directive
  • Celebrate Mass at noon daily.

If you would like to speak to a pastoral care professional, dial extension 8565. You may also call the operator to have a pastoral care associate paged.

The Saint Peter’s Chapel is located on the third floor of the main hospital and is always open for quiet prayer or reflection. Chapel services and inspirational programs can be viewed on television in the patient’s room, free-of-charge on Channel 6.

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