With compassion and commitment, practicing chaplains draw on a wide range of professional experiences and discuss principles, themes, and guidelines that have enhanced their ministries. These practical and successful approaches are aimed at helping others face the daily professional challenges of health care chaplaincy. The issues and responsibilities of chaplaincy work with a variety of patient populations--AIDS sufferers, long-term care patients, stroke victims, and the terminally ill--are thoroughly explored. Contributors provide creative and innovative methods of meeting the needs of hospital patients and their families as well as health care personnel, such as implementing a volunteer clergy program and establishing a surgical reporting plan.

With compassion and commitment, practicing chaplains draw on a wide range of professional experiences and discuss principles, themes, and guidelines that have enhanced their ministries. These practical and successful approaches are aimed at helping others face the daily professional challenges of health care chaplaincy. The issues and responsibilities of chaplaincy work with a variety of patient populations--AIDS sufferers, long-term care patients, stroke victims, and the terminally ill--are thoroughly explored. Contributors provide creative and innovative methods of meeting the needs of hospital patients and their families as well as health care personnel, such as implementing a volunteer clergy program and establishing a surgical reporting plan.