Selected findings from the "New York" and the "metropolitan" chaplaincy studies: a 10-year comparison of chaplaincy in the New York City area.

In recent years, the chaplain-to-patient ratio in U.S. hospitals has remained roughly the same while the role of the hospital chaplain has expanded. We compared data on 33,000 chaplain visits from the New York Chaplaincy Study (1994-1996) with 58,000 chaplain visits from the Metropolitan Chaplaincy Study (2005-2006), in order to explore whether changes in both the role of the healthcare chaplain and changes in the healthcare system itself have affected the amount of time that chaplains are able to spend with patients. The overall pattern of lengths of visits was stable over time, but chaplains in the Metropolitan Chaplaincy Study had proportionally fewer visits with family members and more visits with patients, more visits based on referrals, and spent more time dealing with end-of-life issues than chaplains in the earlier New York Chaplaincy Study. We discuss ways that chaplains seem to be adjusting successfully to increasing demands on their time.