Human. Chaplain.

Not all hospice chaplains start in healthcare.

Hospice chaplains come from a wide range of backgrounds—often with skills that don’t immediately read as “clinical,” but translate directly into the work.

Over six years before working in hospice, I built and operated a small, in-home care practice focused on anxious, behaviorally complex, and medically fragile companion animals. The work required close attention to nonverbal cues, active and ongoing communication with caregivers, and individualized approaches to reduce distress and support stability for companion animals and the people who love them.

Looking back, there’s so much overlap with the skills I use everyday as a hospice chaplain:

• Ongoing assessment using observation when verbal communication is limited
• Individualized approaches based on baseline, change, and response to intervention
• Consistent implementation of care plans to reduce anxiety and increase predictability
• Compassionate presence in moments of distress

Different setting. Same core skills.

Hospice requires those skills to be applied within a clinical and regulatory environment. That environment continues to evolve—documentation, systems, expectations.

The underlying competencies do not.

Much of end-of-life care depends on individualized interventions when communication with patients may have shifted primarily to the nonverbal, or the extraverbal.

My work with companion animals and the people who love them continues to inform how I assess spiritual and existential distress, support coping, and contribute to interdisciplinary care planning as a hospice chaplain.

If you’re considering hospice chaplaincy, or unsure whether your background fits, it’s worth looking again at the skills you already use. The task is translation.

What’s your hospice chaplain story? How are you translating your skills into the work?