Volunteer chaplain Audrey Brown 

FARMINGTON — A volunteer chaplain at Franklin Memorial Hospital wants to leave patients feeling supported and with a sense of hope.

Audrey Brown of New Sharon thinks empathy, showing respect and being nonjudgmental are also important. 

While doctor and nurse interactions with patients can be brief, the chaplains and volunteer chaplains allow patients and their families to tell their stories, she said. 

“The goal is to provide support so they feel they are not there alone,” she said. “We want to leave them with a sense of hope despite their situation.”

Learning of impending death or waiting a few days for surgery can be an anxious time for the patient and family, she said.

Although the title is volunteer chaplain, there is no religious affiliation, she said. It is nondenominational. Prayer is offered to thank the caregivers tending them and to ask for all results to be to their benefit.

Meeting patients in hospice care, palliative care, emergency room care or in the oncology department, the chaplain service is part of a holistic team with a health focus on body, mind and spirit, she said.

Most people are receptive to visits. They are asked if they want a visit upon admission. Doctors and nurses make referrals and for some, it is just about knocking on their door.

Brown usually says, “I’m stopping by to see how your spirits are doing.”

Sometimes the visit is brief. Other times, it might last an hour. Within a three-hour period of volunteering, up to 30 patients might be seen. About 90 percent are welcoming, she said.

Two local clergy share a paid chaplain position through the hospital, but about 10 volunteers are trained to visit and listen. Their work is confidential.

Each goes through an interview and a training program. A chaplain requires a 24-hour session on health and spiritual education followed by 70 hours of supervised visits with a chaplain, she said. Continuing education, an additional four hours a month, is offered.

After working 22 years in the physical therapy department at FMH and serving 25 years as a hospice volunteer with Androscoggin Home Care & Hospice, Brown said life has led her to this volunteer work.

She took the chaplain training program after retiring from FMH in 2012.

“It is a way for me to feel needed in my community,” she said. “It is filling a need, but it also fills a need in me. I feel needed and that I have a purpose. Volunteers get as much out of it as they give. It is an honor to be in their presence at this time of their life.

“You can’t help but be touched by someone else’s pain or joy. But it is not about me. It is not a social visit. It is about the patient and the potential for improving their quality of life even for a short duration.”

Brown said her medical background has helped her. Some medical conditions and diagnoses need to be known, she said.

Being a good listener is a gift that was given to her, she said.

“If you don’t use the gifts you are given to help the world, you are not living life to the fullest,” she said.

The time spent around grief and loss has taught her how to live her own life more fully, to be more healthy, open and caring, she said. 

For several years, she has been into mindfulness training — meditation, exercise, reading — which has led her to this place, she said.

After seeing the decisions others have made, she has learned to either not make those same decisions or to live better by making other choices.

“You learn to prioritize what is most important in life — family — and make different choices,” she said.

abryant@sunmediagroup.net