Rev. Theresa Han

Theresa Han was elected as the new National Minister.

Pray for Theresa Han, chaplain at East Toronto General Hospital in Toronto, Ontario.

Rev. Theresa Han is a Presbyterian minister who heads the department of pastoral care at the East General, where she's worked the last 11 years.

She's Korean born, a mother of three.Her husband Peter is also a minister, favouring the congregational work she finds too routine and repetitive - "like housework."

For her, hospital chaplaincy is intense, spontaneous and, for all its heartbreak and potential for burnout, as rewarding as it is challenging.

These days, in this hospital, to provide care for the spirit is to deal with all the faiths of the world.Moreover, it is to handle daily the things most of us from most any culture most fear - illness, injury, death, loss, grief.

"When someone becomes sick, people become very uncomfortable," Han says.

"They don't know what to say.
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We are more than mere physical bodies requiring mechanical care, Han says.

Increasingly, spirituality is seen as a contributor both to maintaining health and to coping with illness and trauma.

When people get sick, "it is often time for them to get connected with their own spiritual resources," she says.In the need to question and understand life's purpose and worth, some turn to prayer, some turn to chaplains.

"There are a lot of feelings of anxiety in this building.A lot of uncertainty.What's going to happen?What if I lose my limb?
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Sometimes there are happy moments, as when Han officiated at a wedding of an elderly patient.Often there is pain and anger.

"I remember once a nurse saying, `Come quick!Somebody needs you!' When I got there, he yelled, `There is no God, no God.' I was overwhelmed by his anger.But being there was the best thing I could do for that patient because he needed somewhere to do that at that time.I learned not to take it personally."

WITH THIS RING: Ross Thomas, 76, and Eileen McGregor, 73, are married by Chaplain Theresa Han yesterday at Toronto East General Hospital.
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The hospital chaplain, Theresa Han, nurses and public affairs staff helped make the wedding possible.

Rev. Theresa Han has stroked the hair of a terminally ill woman, assuring her that family members would be all right.

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Han, a Presbyterian minister who heads the hospital's department of pastoral care, says spiritual care is becoming an integral part of health care."If they need someone to be silent with, we will be there; talk to, we will listen; cry with, we will receive their tears."

At East General, her chaplains deal with all faiths, and patients with none.The hospital offers a chapel and meditation room.Every Sunday, there is an ecumenical Christian service.On Fridays, there are Muslim prayers.
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In addition to caring for about 500 patients, Theresa Han worries also about the 2,500 staff in a line of work where pain and death are constants."They look fine. ...But, underneath, there is tremendous pain, all the worries and anxieties that they're carrying."

As for the chaplains themselves, they cope in different ways.Sister Marie writes poetry.
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Han's three children keep her busy.They, she says, are her chaplains.

"Driving home sometimes, there's a lot of tears because there's so much pain here.But I have their lives waiting for me."

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