Spiritual Care at Piedmont Atlanta
Professional chaplains are responsible for providing spiritual and emotional support for patients, families, and hospital staff. Whether a person has a deep-seated faith, a questioning faith, or no faith, chaplains are clinically trained to provide care and support, to be the person who can pull up a chair and stay. Chaplains are members of the interdisciplinary team, assessing patient’s needs in a variety of ways and shaping specific interventions to lower spiritual distress and increase resilience, resulting in improved patient outcomes.
Chaplains provide, among other things:
- Spiritual support
- Emotional care
- Liaison services for Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Jehovah’s Witness patients through formal volunteer relationships.
- Outreach to an individual’s particular clergy or place of worship when requested.
- Support in the midst of difficult decisions and grief.
- Care when experiencing fear, anger, anxiety, or loss.
Spiritual Care is integrated into the life of Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, with chaplains serving on both formal and informal committees, including the Ethics Committee, the Institutional Review Board, Cancer Committee, and Mended Hearts. A large role is also hospital staff support. In the stressful modern health care environment, we provide a listening ear, support in the midst of difficult situations, space to talk and debrief, and grief support.
Spiritual Care Services at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital maintains four (4) full-time chaplains and nine (9) on-call chaplains. Chaplains are available twenty-four (24) hours a day, seven (7) days a week. Monday through Thursday, there is a chaplain in the hospital from 8:00 am until 8:00 pm, and on Fridays from 8:00am until 5:00 pm. At nights and on the weekends, there is always an on-call chaplain available.
The Spiritual Care Services office is on the third (3rd) Floor of the 77 Building. The main department number is 404-605-3558, the preferred number for general referrals. For time sensitive situations or requests, please call the hospital operator at 404-605-5000 and ask for the on-call chaplain.
The hospital chapel is located on the first (1st) floor of the hospital, near Admissions and the Surgery waiting area.
Piedmont Atlanta does not offer the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program.