Healthcare Chaplaincy Program
Like all major religious and spiritual traditions, Buddhism places a strong emphasis on teaching practitioners how to face their own old age, sickness and death, without denial, and how to offer compassionate care to other people who are going through these inescapable stages of the human experience.
For Buddhists living in Victoria, access to Buddhist chaplains in the healthcare system has been very ad-hoc up until now. BCV’s participation in an interfaith approach to developing healthcare chaplaincy and spiritual care services for Buddhists is an important and exciting step for us, because it opens up the potential for building on our community’s current capacities in this area, and the possibilities for developing spiritual care models and resources in a systematic way so as to ensure effective services are available in the future.
We can now look forward to a time when appropriate spiritual care support can conceivably be offered to inpatients, their families and significant others, Buddhists and anyone else who wishes to access it.
For Buddhists living in Victoria, access to Buddhist chaplains in the healthcare system has been very ad-hoc up until now. BCV’s participation in an interfaith approach to developing healthcare chaplaincy and spiritual care services for Buddhists is an important and exciting step for us, because it opens up the potential for building on our community’s current capacities in this area, and the possibilities for developing spiritual care models and resources in a systematic way so as to ensure effective services are available in the future.
We can now look forward to a time when appropriate spiritual care support can conceivably be offered to inpatients, their families and significant others, Buddhists and anyone else who wishes to access it.