Reverend Raumiria McRobert – The chaplain

Reverend Raumiria McRobert counsels the sick and afflicted at the Waikato Hospital, sometimes in situations that she would never have anticipated.

I went to visit a patient in his room and I didn’t realize that he was in the middle of an emergency  surgery and I was shocked to see this had happened as I walked in.

I just grabbed his hand and prayed for him as he was going but the doctors told me to stay with him – he had no family with him. So I just held on to his hand as they worked around me, connecting tubes and wires. They opened him up and I could see his heart beating in his chest. I was amazed that they worked around me. I was willing to step back but they told me, “No, stay with the patient.”

This happened over an hour. I was there for 10 minutes before they started, half an hour before they worked on him and I sat there after and kept talking to him and as they say – they still can hear you no matter what – so I prayed and talked and encouraged him to be with us, don’t leave us – FIGHT, fight it out. To me really that felt like hours.

My legs were so tired, some part there through the procedure the nurses brought me a chair. But after everything had settled down and he was stable, the doctors came and thanked me for being with him. For the family. He had no one. He was from Gisborne, a long way from home.

We talked about it afterward. I just commented, “How dare you keep me to yourself for so long!”
He was all smiles about it and that was really good.

I’ve been working here at the hospital for over four years where I am one of five chaplains. Specifically, I’m the Maori chaplain. The people I visit day to day are mostly Maori but if I go to the wards and have other patients talk to me then I will respond to them.

I like meeting people and I hear a lot of stories, good, bad and sad. I meet people in different ways, with different attitudes and I just follow what’s needed.

I’d say the main thing of chaplaincy is having a good listening ear – time and patience with the listening ear as you share yourself with all the patients. The need for us is always there. Even just to hold a hand sometimes.

Some people have come in here with a real low esteem. I’ve seen some very low, disappointed because of the sickness that they have created or that has fallen upon them.

You’ve just got to uplift them before you can get into a real decent conversation. Some of them have a negative attitude towards everyone and you just have to break through that wall. When you reach through, there’s a long story behind it. A lot of it is not really nice to listen to, but who else do they have to talk to? This is what we do. We listen to a lot of personal private stories.

Every day is so different and so filling. I suppose it is my call.