Spiritual Care and Chapel

Stained GlassThe Spiritual Care Department consists of an interfaith team of staff chaplains who offer holistic ministry to patients, families and staff.

  • We believe in a personal and loving God whose presence in all persons is the source of human dignity.
  • Persons are relational, and the support of others in a caring community.
  • The revelation of a compassionate God teaches us that suffering can be transformed and made meaningful.
  • During life's journey all persons have opportunities to heal and be healed.
  • The challenge of a hospital stay is to integrate personal beliefs and values into the healing of body, mind, and spirit.

What We Do

Our challenge as spiritual caregivers is to respect and honor people's inherent ability and desire to find God's compassion and love.

Emotional and spiritual support

  • Prayer
  • Foster the search for inner strength and wisdom
  • Encourage expression of feelings and concerns regarding current illness
  • Explore spiritual concerns and perceptions of how present illness impacts one's life
  • Guide reflection on the meaning of events
  • Emotional support in times of crisis

Religious and cultural practices

  • Consider expectations regarding religious/cultural practices during hospital stay
  • Assess desire for sacramental ministry
  • Guided imagery and relaxation techniques
  • Identify usefulness of religious rituals as part of the healing process

Grief and loss issues

  • Grief support group
  • Visit past losses and their meaning
  • Facilitate emotional/spiritual responses to current crisis
  • Cultivate an environment to freely discuss painful feelings and concerns
  • Provide support and clarify information establishing code status or changes of code status
  • As appropriate, enable life review
  • Attend to the issues surrounding death
  • Comfort in the midst of fear, anxiety and loss
  • Nurture the process of forgiveness and reconciliation
  • Quarterly memorial services
  • Available for family conferences

Volunteer opportunities

  • Hospital Eucharistic Ministry. For questions contact Sr. Mary McGovern at 707-525-5300 x6105
  • Hospital Spiritual Care Volunteer Program. Contact our spiritual care office at 707-525-5300 ext. 6105

Training will focus on providing spiritual care specifically to the patients/families at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, or Petaluma Valley Hospital, under the mentoring of staff chaplains. If you would like to minister to the spiritual needs of hospital patients and their families, please e-mail for an interview. We would be delighted to have you join us! People from all traditions, lay or ordained, will be welcomed and interviewed.

No previous hospital ministry experience needed.

  • DoveHospital No One Dies Alone (NODA) Compassionate Companion Program. Contact our spiritual care office at 707-525-5300 ext. 6105 

No one is born alone and, in the best of circumstances, no one dies alone. Yet from time to time terminally ill patients come to Memorial Hospital or Petaluma Valley Hospital who have neither family nor close friends to be with them as they near the end of life.

No One Dies Alone is a volunteer program that provides the reassuring presence of a volunteer companion to dying patients who would otherwise be alone. With the support of the nursing staff, companions are thus able to help provide patients with that most valuable of human gifts: a dignified death. Compassionate companions vigil in 3-hour shifts around the clock with dying patients.

  • Community Spiritual Caregiver-Visitation with our House Calls Program.
    Contact our spiritual care office at 707-525-5300 ext. 6105
    New Spiritual Care Volunteer Opportunity! We need volunteers willing to visit clients in spiritual need in our House Calls Program. The House Calls Team provides medical care to house-bound clients and currently is taking care of nearly 100 clients from Petaluma to Windsor.

    Requirements:
    • Completion of 10-week Hospice Caregiver training within last two years; (or educational/experiential equivalent)
    • Completion of additional Spiritual Care Visiting modules (to be offered)
    • Current and complete file at Hospice
    • Willingness to visit people in their homes

Chapel and reflection rooms

Space is available and open to all for prayer, meditation, or quiet time at the following locations:

Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital
1165 Montgomery Drive,
Santa Rosa Chapel, off lobby
Mass: Mon - Fri at noon, Sun at 4 p.m.

Petaluma Valley Hospital
400 N. McDowell Blvd.,
Petaluma Reflection Room, off lobby

Area lodging

To assist patients' family members the Spiritual Care Department maintains a list of area motels and hotels that offer special "Hospital Rates."