The image of the hospice chaplain.

In the author's twenty-five years of supervising Clinical Pastoral Education students, a strong emphasis on how to facilitate grief work and how to minister to the dying has been an important element in the students' effective work as parish clergy, institutional chaplains and pastoral counselors. An analysis of more subjective aspects of their CPE experiences indicates that equally important are images that the chaplain represents to the patient, family or staff. Three excerpts from verbatim patient interviews are used to illustrate the place that transferred meanings of the Church, of God, and of the source for dealing with ultimate questions, play in the role of chaplain.