ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, New Hampshire Hospital in Concord began to explore and engage in self-improvement. The hospital took to the process like a duck to water, and soon, continuous quality improvement became a standard hospital process. When individuals decide to engage in hospital ministry, they bring to that decision some basic assumptions concerning the nature of such a ministry including: the functions they will perform and for whom; how the functions will be performed; and why they intend to engage in hospital ministry. Unconscious, implicit, distorted, and/or idealized assumptions and values can make the task of choosing a person for a chaplaincy position quite difficult. While it might be said that the value of inclusivity is implicit in the preceding sections, issues of diversity and age have the ability to motivate visions of what hospital ministry could and should be. In some cases, clinically trained chaplains supervise and support clergy in their pastoral care and hospital ministry endeavors.
