Two Worlds, One Patient

“Can you call in the chaplain please?”

My heart raced and my breath became shallow as those words reached my ears. I stood in the control room, looking out at two nursing students through one-way glass as they navigated their way through a real-life scenario. I slowly walked toward the pretend hospital room with shaking hands as I was about to share Scripture with a machine-operated dummy and two arguing “parents.”

I knew everything was just for practice and a seventeen-year-old’s arm was not actually about to be amputated on the third floor of Providence Hall. But the anxiousness of navigating how to calm down frantic parents and walk through the truth of Scripture felt all too real.

However, in those moments when I held the hands of a robotic patient and prayed over him and his soon-to-be amputated arm, I was overwhelmed with this sense of purpose, this purpose that I have been given the opportunity to share the Gospel with people who desperately need it, whether they are in the middle of a hospital room or in the middle of a church service.

Two worlds were united on Monday, Feb. 18, as Christian studies students and nursing students combined to work through an emotional and heart-racing simulation lab. Medicine and morals collided as students from both disciplines acted as nurses and hospital chaplains to solve the dilemma of a teenager needing an arm amputation but refusing it.

Ben Mitchell, professor in the School of Theology and Missions and graves professor of moral philosophy, has had students from his Christian Ethics class participate in this simulation for two years, and he says that he always sees students grow in their appreciation for what nurses do and become more sensitive to how challenging it is to think on your feet in a stressful situation.

“Ethics becomes less academic and more real-life,” Mitchell said.

Tamara Friesen, a senior digital media major, and Ally Cochran, a sophomore interdisciplinary studies major, also participated in the simulation lab Monday afternoon. We all filed out of Providence Hall, full of energy, and sat in the back table of The Lex as we recapped what the simulation had been like and how we had gotten our first taste of a full-time ministry career. One thing that we all agreed on: nursing students don’t get enough credit.

I watched in awe as they checked blood pressures, monitored heart rates and tried to do their jobs with two arguing parents (who were senior nursing majors and very believable middle-aged couples) screaming at them the entire time.

As the designated chaplain, we felt honored to help alleviate some of the stress from the room.

“[The nursing students] could focus on the patient while I could focus on calming the parents down,” Cochran said. “They could focus on the patient’s needs while I could focus on their heart.”

A rush of adrenaline that came from the excitement of sharing the Gospel during a life-or-death situation kicked in the moment all of us stepped foot in the hospital room, but not every day are we faced with a critical situation such as the one acted out.

So how can we, as students on mission for the Kingdom of God, live with this sense of urgency to share the Gospel?

“I don’t think it should take a desperate situation to tell someone about the Lord,” said Friesen. “As cool as that simulation was, I think it reminded me of how many people I don’t tell about the Lord every day.”

Cochran, nodding her head in agreement, said, “In everyday life, people are going through hard things and just need someone to sit down with them to talk.”

Whether we further practice our education in the ministry through raising a family, leading a church or working as a hospital chaplain, being able to bring Christian ethics into practice during a high-stress situation was incredible and eye-opening.

“Putting the situation in perspective is so neat because it makes you reflect more on all of our lives,” Friesen said. “It’s cool to help other people in their time of crises, so when we’re in crises, we can learn from their situations.”

Mitchell says he wants his students to see that many ethical decisions are made in collaboration with others, especially in the medical, business or church context.

“I want my students to see that what they are learning in the classroom has application in real life,” Mitchell said. “We can’t just talk about ethical theory, eventually we have to make a decision.”