The Chaplain Grieves in Silence: Marginalisation, Disenfranchised Grief, and Chaplaincy

The palliative chaplains’ role inevitably places them in continual exposure to acute grief and multiple losses, similarly to other healthcare professionals. This experience of professional-related grief has often been ignored and can be described as disenfranchised grief. However, there are different underlying dimensions within this understanding of disenfranchised grief, as experienced by hospital palliative chaplains, which are distinguishable from the grief experiences of their non-chaplain colleagues in the multidisciplinary team. These disparities are often overlooked by the chaplains themselves as well as by their host institution and their care recipients. These cumulative and recurrent experiences of unacknowledged and unattended grief acutely impact the chaplains’ practice on an ongoing basis.