- Spiritual care team provides additional to support for patients
- Patients can request a practitioner of a particular tradition
- Full network of support is available in hospital and in community
A cancer diagnosis may send some people in search of answers their doctors can’t provide. To help those who turn to faith, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center has a Spiritual Care team ready to provide support and comfort.
“I look at our role as being a second layer of help to patients,” says Melody Rutherford, DMin, MDiv, MS-BCC, Director of Spiritual Care at Roswell Park. “We understand that when people come in here, they are already receiving treatment, some sort of medicine, some sort of something to help them through their cancer journey. I feel like we're in the background helping them with what really matters.”
Rev. Dr. Rutherford and her team of campus-based chaplains, and community connections to spiritual care professionals, volunteers and churches, provide Roswell Park patients with an extra layer of care. The Roswell Park Spiritual Care team is available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., or as needed via the on-call system.
Spirituality is “a thing of the heart, that's a thing of the soul. Even after they swallow the pill,” she says. “They're still worrying about or concerned about that spiritual person.”
Many patients might not be comfortable talking about their spiritual or soul-centered concerns, Rev. Dr. Rutherford says. They’ll discuss their aches and pains, or side effects from treatment, as those are the things they go to their doctors to address. “As a chaplain…we get the stuff that the doctor has no clue the patient is ruminating on when they leave the room,” she says.
A hand to hold, an ear to listen
With patients coming into the center from all walks of life and a variety of faiths, beliefs and spiritual practices, Roswell Park’s Spiritual Care team is prepared to discuss and provide support that reflects and represents their individual faith-based traditions.
Dawud Adiola is a Muslim chaplain at Roswell Park who sometimes is called to sit with patients of different backgrounds. “People sometimes specify they are Catholic, they want a priest or they want a reverend or a rabbi. Other times, they just want prayer. They just want a spiritual person to come and help anoint them and bring a spiritual presence into their environment. We kind of leave it open and let them tell us what they need.”
When the doctors are gone, and a patient is left with their thoughts and their questions, “We remind them that all of the most religious men, the prophets, they all suffered. They were afflicted with various things. The best example is Job, who’s in the Bible and the Quran,” and even in the face of pain maintained his faith.
“In my experience and from my faith tradition, the most comforting thing is to understand that the life that we are in presently is only a temporary abode,” Adiola says. “It's just a temporary resting place. The real life lies in the hereafter. The place that we go after we breathe our last and where we're going to stay forever and ever.”
