Difficult Seasons

From the moment I walk in from the garage, I start working on my smile, trying to make eye contact with everyone I meet, to connect, so that when I walk into a patient’s room, they are able to sense that I like them.

As I listened to these words come out of my mouth while teaching a section on closing the interpersonal gap with folks we are visiting, I was a little surprised.

I’m used to things coming out of my mouth that are new thoughts.  I understand that with my personality type that I tend to process thoughts by saying them out loud.  So that was not surprising.

And I was not surprised that I was telling the class that I was intentional in practicing my smile and my eye contact on people that I met in the halls of the hospital.  I’ve talked out loud about that before, even written about it.  And it’s not just for the practice — it’s a genuine attempt to make a difference as I walk the halls.

But I was somewhat surprised that I’d verbally connected it with another very important purpose — helping patients’ first impression of me be that I like them.

Trying to have patients sense immediately that I like them — when they are not at their best physically and emotionally and perhaps spiritually — is a way to show my love for them, to validate them as people.  And if I can be successful in doing that, then there’s a chance that I can have the opportunity to meet some of their other needs.

Tags: chaplaincy, eye contact, interpersonal gap, smile

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Chaplaincy and Pastoral Care, hospital visits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.