TRANSCRIPT
ANH: “Hi Michael how are you?”
MICHAEL: “Going well! “
ANH: “How’s your day been? “
MICHAEL: “Pretty busy today.”
ANH: “It has been a journey, eh?”
MICHAEL: “It has been in a few short days!“
Anh Nguyen is talking to cardiac patient Michael Salter who is recovering from major surgery at the Victorian Heart Hospital.
Ms Nguyen is not a nurse or a chaplain, instead she’s among a growing number of spiritual carers.
ANH: “So usually in a spiritual care conversation, we focus on what gives you meaning and what gives you strength.”
MICHAEL: “It probably comes back to family and the purpose, that we all share.”
For Mr Salter that was brought into sharp focus in recent weeks.
He was flown by helicopter from his home in the NSW-Victorian border town of Albury for life-saving heart surgery in Melbourne, following a medical emergency.
“There's three components to the artery and the two inner ones just shredded, which is what happens with an aortic dissection. And I'm someone who's always felt that I took pretty good care of myself and all of a sudden I was just about gone.”
It’s a challenging time for the 66-year-old, as he recovers in a private room, gazing at the sporting fields below his hospital window.
“Seeing people playing soccer and football and everything, and I guess realizing how fragile that is. I've got to think about and understand perhaps, life changes at this point.”
And that’s where spiritual carer ANH Nguyen steps in -- to help Mr Salter and patients like him, grapple with some of life’s big questions.
“Oh, certainly. To have someone available who has a broader perspective on those situations than you have personally.”
ANH: “What’s more challenging for you at the moment?”
MICHAEL: “What’s more challenging? The sense of the unknown a bit, knowing what took place and knowing what they’ve done. From here on I think the challenge for me is to understand what comes next and what I am able to get back to and supports I will need and how well I can recover.
Spiritual care is a focus for Monash Health across its 40 locations.
Ms Nguyen is among a growing team providing support for patients living through a medical crisis, or after a difficult diagnosis.
“If they are religious, usually they will request for their representative to come in and do a prayer, a blessing. Or when it's come to end-of-life they require last rites.”
However, in the latest Australian Census, 10 million people or nearly 40 per cent of respondents ticked ‘no religion’. So many hospitals like Monash Health now offer non-religious spiritual care.
“When it comes to end of life, there's a lot of unfinished business, and the patient would like to reset their priority so that they can focus in that short time left. For the patient who are non-religious, then usually I provide spiritual emotional support, which means we have conversation about what give them some meaning, what gives them strength, what gives them comfort during this time. And by listening we give them a safe space to release that distress and emotional and give them strength to move forward.”
Ms Nguyen has worked for more than a decade in hospitals and prisons. The 53-year-old says she developed compassion as a child growing up outside Saigon during the Vietnam war.
“There was a lot of hardship and my parents was struggling just to get through the day. After the war ended, and I was five years old, my dad has to move into the countryside where he built a house with mud and coconut leaf. The floor of the house was all muddy, all muddy. We was always hungry and we were struggling. My parents went through a lot and they have their own issues. So I held back a lot of emotion and just try to support my parents. My mum’s parents being executed by military when mum was nine years old, right in front of her. And then my dad’s parents, they both died when my father was really young, about 10 years old as well. So, all that trauma that my parents carry on, but the only thing that they touch me was compassion.”
After arriving in Australia at the age of 21 with limited English skills, Ms Nguyen went on to build a career in IT. But her father’s death later became a turning point.
“My dad had lung cancer, in 2000, and that's when dad passed away. I was devastated. Dad was the whole world to me. My parents was the whole world to me. And I had a lot of time in silence and I sort of reassessing my life. And I got support from grief counsellor. They listened to me and they share with me. I share with them my journey. And then, I realised that there was a lot of grief for me. Grief from losing my father, grief from leaving the country, left behind everything and came here with a lot of uncertainty.”
Ms Nguyen went on to complete a diploma in counselling and finish post-graduate psychology and self-help studies. She says helping people living through crisis has given her new purpose.
“My job is not just a job, I think it's a calling. Holding the patient hands during this journey, the most difficult journey for them is something really rewarding, something is priceless. And I feel very grateful for that, for the opportunity to be with them in that moment and to see, to witness, to foster their strength and resilience and hope.”
Monash Health’s manager of social work and spiritual care, Michael Splawa-Neyman says Ms Nguyen brings a lot to her role.
“She's very empathetic. She's a fantastic listener, she's very kind. She makes people feel comfortable. And that's a key skill for a spiritual care worker. Some people have supportive families, some people have nobody at all and have no friends at all and are very isolated. So, the spiritual care role is very much one of coming in and listening to patients in a time when they might be very fearful, very scared, very frightened.”
Despite a recent decline of one million followers, Christianity remains Australia’s top religion at almost 44 per cent of the population. However, with rising migration from Asia and the Middle East, Australia is becoming more religiously diverse. Mr Splawa-Neyman says that requires a different approach to crisis care.
“We have interpreting services within Monash Health that we use on a daily basis to support patients, to still provide them with that spiritual intervention if they don't speak English. It's a non-denominational approach really. It's so much more than treating someone's physical ailments. It's looking at the whole person: their spirituality, their psychological wellbeing, and their emotional wellbeing as well.”
For cardiac patient Andrew Jackson who was celebrating his birthday on the ward, a bedside chat with Ms Nguyen was a blessing.
“I'm not a religious person, but it is nice to talk to someone who's caring, who honestly has some mental support into there. It’s very nice.”
“I learn a lot from you, a lot of wisdom and I really, really feel that you had a lot of strength and courage to go through all this.”
For Anh Nguyen – providing spiritual care is also a way to pay forward the gifts she received as a child.
“All my work, along my life, I just want to honour my parents, because they make me who I am today. And I feel forever grateful for that.”
