Need ideas on getting a hospital chaplain to stop trying to talk to atheist inpatient.

[Chan790]

5. He needs to say so.

Whether to her, the nurses or his doctor (note that you're not in that list); he has to say he doesn't want to speak to the chaplain.

The problem arises because the patient tells you they don't want to speak to the chaplain, you tell the chaplain, the chaplain pops her head in and asks the patient directly (which they can and in many hospitals are supposed to do in this circumstance to confirm the patient's wants/needs) and the patient for whatever reason says they would like the company. Now the chaplain sees you as misrepresenting the spiritual/visitation wants of the patient.

She sounds like the type who is not going to listen to it from anybody but him anyway and if she's a hospital chaplain she's going to know the rules well enough regarding what she and cannot do and that it's his expressed wishes (not yours) that must be respected, that hospital administration isn't going to act without him saying anything. Ultimately, either to her or to the nurses or both, he has to express his desire not to talk to her.

Until then, misguided as it is, even if she's not trying to minister to him, she's going to think that visiting inpatients who, by assumption must be lonely, bored and grateful for company and conversation is an act of charity and mercy even when it does nothing but annoy the patient. (I've known chaplains and religiously-motivated hospital volunteers of this sort before. I get the dull-persistence of their thinking.) She's probably confused and thinks very poorly of you that you're trying to deprive him of companionship through what must be a lonely and difficult time.

Annoying persistent gits, aren't they.