BILLINGS - If you have wondered what a typical day is like for a hospital chaplain, John Jamison will tell you.
“There’s no typical day as a chaplain,” he laughs.
He never knows what the day might bring when his pager goes off, but as you might imagine, there are plenty of difficult days.
Watch John Jamison talk about his work as a chaplain
No matter what the situation, Chaplain John is always there for patients and their families.
“Bringing comfort to them-- a time to cry on our shoulder and help walk them through the next stage. Sometimes the next stage is grief, sometimes it's joy. We see both here. We see a lot of both,” he says.
John says he’s seen some recoveries during his time as a chaplain that can only be described as miraculous.
“It is not out of the ordinary for someone to come into the emergency department and the initial assessment is better get hold of the rest of the family because this is not going to end well—but because of the good and exceptional care they receive here before you know it they have been transferred out of ICU to a regular patient room and start to talk about discharge and it’s miraculous,” he says.
He first moved to Billings to start a wilderness program at the Boys Ranch, but says he long felt a calling to the ministry.
He’s not only now the longest serving chaplain at the hospital, but also a mentor to many other chaplains.
“He has a gift of the warm and welcoming presence that we often associate with our profession, but he also just brings this delight to his job, a sense of joy and purpose to the people that he meets that he shows up for and serves,” says Kristin La Ve’, Spiritual Care Manager for Intermountain Health.
It’s not just patients and their families that chaplains like John are there to comfort.
They also support the caregivers at the hospital.
“We know that there will be really tough days and situations and they continue doing that beautiful work, so we are there cheerleaders we are there support staff. We hold space for them if things are especially hard if they need to step out and just lean on somebody,” says La Ve.’
“I love coming to work I love getting to do what I get to do. I don’t call it work. I call it service and large part it’s because of who I get to do it with,” Jamison says.
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