Clinical Pastoral Education: The Work of the Chaplain
This past winter I spent 10 weeks at Bellevue Hospital Center in NYC as a chaplain. It. Was. Awesome. I had the chance to minister to a very diverse group of people, I mean, on Bellevue's own website it says that it's, "a microcosm of the Third World – a hospital for the undocumented, impoverished and disfranchised" ( Bellevue CPE ). I was assigned the prison floor where inmates from Rikers Island would come to have medical/surgical procedures done, Medical ICU, Coronary Care Unit, Rehabilitation, Adult Psych, and when on-call Adult and Pediatric ER. To be honest I really didn’t know what to expect coming into CPE. I had spoken with a couple of other Army chaplains that have been through at least one unit and they absolutely loved it. Well, maybe love is too strong of a word, lets just say that they learned a lot from the experience and told me that if I ever got the chance to do it, to jump on the opportunity. They said it was very introspective and there’s