The chaplain interns enrolled in Bellevue Hospital Center’s clinical pastoral education program rotate daily through one of the largest and busiest emergency rooms in the country. The physical size of Bellevue’s ER and the number of patients overwhelms the neophyte chaplains. It’s scary to see the blue uniforms clustered in a corner of the Adult ER – Correction Officers and Police keeping an eye on their patients shackled to gurneys. Whose hair doesn’t stand on end when a blood curdling scream is hurled across the room by a suffering patient?
Ambulances arrive, staff move among the gurneys – the choreography for all its energy seems softer and less brittle than the ER TV show.
As Bellevue’s pastoral educator I trip through the ER with each chaplain intern in the second week of their 10 weeks, 400-hour program. We go from Urgent Care, a section for economically disadvantaged people who need to use the ER for their family doctor, to the Pediatric and Adolescent ER, which has its own waiting room and caters to thousands of sick kids every year. The Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program fills up everyday with folks who have emotional problems. The Adult ER has 28 gurneys. The Emergency Ward is a 15- bed hospital for patients who need to stay overnight. The various areas can treat 75 patients at a time and the beds change three or four times a day.
During my tour with the chaplain interns I relate Bellevue ER lore: If the President of the United States is injured when in New York City, he or she will be taken to the Bellevue Hospital Emergency Room, New York City’s major trauma center. Lewis Thomas, M.D., the distinguished physician and essayist once remarked, “If I were to be taken in a taxicab with something serious or struck down in a New York street, I would want to be taken to Bellevue.” Part of the mythology of the ER is that people who are shot in NYC always say: “Bring me to Bellevue.”
Several years ago cramped with gut pain I went to a much smaller ER in a local NYC hospital. They lost me in plain sight for over two hours. The place was cold and my wife, Ann found a blanket for me and herself. To add insult to injury a nurse’s aid grabbed my wife’s blanket screaming, “The blankets are for patients only.” No one is treated so callously or gets lost in Bellevue’s ER. Patients receive attention from 35 physicians, 63 residents in Emergency Medicine, 40 nurses, numerous aids and social workers. Chaplains and Chaplain Interns make their rounds throughout the day.
Last summer I was taking Philip Ohriner, an intern from Jewish Theological Seminary, around the ER. We stopped at the gurney of a woman who seemed to be a sheet of pain. Philip introduced himself. The woman shook her head yes when he asked her if she would like to speak to a chaplain. A commotion to my right drew my attention away from the pastoral event unfolding before me. I looked up and Dr. Lewis Goldfrank, Professor and Chief of ER Medicine, was motioning for me to come across the room. He stepped up to me and said: “Chaplain, chaplain. Over here we have a man who doesn’t feel life is worth living. He wants to give up. Surely he needs a chaplain.” I move across the area. Dr. Goldfrank says to the patient: “This is the chaplain.”
The patient is sitting on the edge of a gurney. It looks like he has just changed into the clean clothes the Social Work Department supplies. The standard issue new black sneakers sit on a stool beneath his feet. His feet are swollen like most of the homeless people you meet at Bellevue. The man is from South Africa.
Chaplain: So the doctor says you don’t want to go on living.
Patient: I live to drink.
Chaplain: Sounds like a tough way to live.
Patient: It’s my choice.
Chaplain: You’re not interested in any of the treatment programs we have at
Bellevue?
Patient: I told you I live to drink.
Chaplain: It sounds so harsh.
Patient: My younger brother died last year in South Africa. Drank himself to
Death.
Chaplain: What a tragedy.
Patient: I live to drink, I drink to die.
Chaplain: It sounds so hopeless.
Patient: You have your job Chaplain. I appreciate you talking with me.
My job is to drink myself to death.
Chaplain: I don’t know what to say – err – err – God bless you.
I walk back over to where Philip is ministering to the woman. A few moments later I glance across the room to the South African. Dr. Lewis Goldfrank, one of the most renowned Emergency Medicine Physicians in the world, is putting on the man’s sneakers. His tall, lanky frame is bent over the South African patient. He laces each shoe and ties each knot.
Philip and I move on to another gurney and while he is introducing himself to the patient I glance toward Triage and the Entrance. Lewis Goldfrank is holding the door open for the man who lives to drink and drinks to die.
Filed under: Resource
