What your resource might convey

• Your resource should explain — succinctly! — what spiritual staff do and why they do it. For example, the original “Yellow Card” noted that “Chaplains help people draw on their strengths and spiritual resources as part of the healing process.” You should modify this language for your own institution, but it offers a very brief summary of the work of spiritual care.
• Encourage non-spiritual care staff to make a referral directly to a chaplain in situations that may benefit from spiritual care expertise.
• Encourage non-spiritual care staff to simply ask questions if they do not understand what it is chaplains offer or why they offer it.
• If your institution provides spiritual care to staff, consider mentioning this on your resource — staff may be unaware that this is available to them, or hesitant to engage spiritual care staff without encouragement.
• Be sure to include contact information for spiritual care staff, including pager numbers, in-house phone numbers, numbers that can be reached from outside the institution, email addresses, or other methods.

Why not just ask if a patient, caregiver, or staff member wants to see a chaplain?

Asking patients, caregivers, and staff whether they want to see or be visited by a chaplain can be problematic — they may feel pressured, instinctively resistant, or otherwise under duress to give a certain answer. They may be unaware of what a chaplain is, what spiritual care is, or how they might relate to these concepts. They may be in distress and unable to consider or recognize their own needs, which may become clearer once acute distress has passed.

What needs could your resource help explain are met by spiritual care staff?

Staff may be unfamiliar with spiritual care staff or unaware of the wide variety of reasons that patients, caregivers, and staff members can benefit from spiritual care. Some of these needs include:

• Anxiety, fear, dread, or uncertainty about diagnoses or treatments
• Making meaning of what is happening to them
• Non-therapeutic emotional support
• Discussing the need to make decisions about treatment, individually or as a family or group
• Concerns or questions about specific matters of religion or spirituality
• Specific rituals, texts, or material needs pertaining to religion or spirituality
• Impending death, active dying, or recent death

What form(s) could you resource take?

It is helpful to provide both physical and digital resources that are quickly accessible. You might consider one or more of the following:

• A physical document, smaller than letter-sized paper, with information on both sides. This could be laminated and printed on brightly colored paper to make it recognizable and more difficult to lose.
• A poster or flyer in staff work areas.
• An inclusion in regular or periodic employee communications.
• A PDF that can be distributed via email or text.
• A web page on the institution’s website or intranet.
• A QR code that can be deployed in a variety of ways, linked to a PDF or web page.

What else should I consider?

• You are the experts on the community in your institutions, both staff and those who are receiving care. The information you provide to them should take this expertise into account and be tailored to your community’s specific needs.
• Bear in mind that your institution likely has policies on distributing information and internal communication. Your referral resource and the ways you distribute it should always remain within the boundaries of institutional policy.