KAMLOOPS, BC-Residents of this southern interior city are scrambling to raise enough money to keep funding a full-time hospital chaplain.

The Interior Health Authority (IHA), which oversees hospitals and care facilities in the region, says it will terminate the position once and for all as of April 11, if the funds are not forthcoming.

The IHA first fired Anglican priest Viktor Gundel, the clinical chaplain at Royal Inland Hospital, two years ago to save money. Other facilities under the authority’s jurisdiction-including Kelowna, Vernon and Nelson-also saw their chaplaincy programs abolished.

It marked the first time since chaplains were introduced in Canadian hospitals 30 years earlier that the position had been eliminated.

But when Kamloops doctors, hospital staff, politicians and clergy protested Gundel’s firing, the IHA re-instated him on condition that the community generate the $70,000 needed annually to cover his salary, support personnel and office expenses.

While local churches have been major players in several fundraisers since then, this time is different, says Calvary Temple pastor Don Maione.

"We’re tapped out," he says. "Because of the economic things that have hit us, plus the wildfires of last summer, we’ve been called upon to basically empty our pockets on many different occasions. And the funds just aren’t there from the church sector."

Despite several attempts to persuade the IHA board to resume funding chaplaincy services, chairman Alan Dolman says the matter is closed. "The board is very comfortable with its original decision," he told the Kamloops Daily News in January.

Kevin Krueger, the region’s Liberal MLA, is planning a golf tournament in hopes of raising $30,000 as a stopgap to keep Gundel in place for now.

"It’s very hard on him and his family to be in that position," he says. "I had hoped that we would get funding one year ahead…but we haven’t attained that yet."

And while he is hopeful that the government will eventually resume funding hospital chaplains, Krueger concedes, "It won’t be this year."

At the same time, he acknowledges the authority’s own limited resources. "They have said to me, ‘Well, Kevin, if we did [budget for chaplains], which 12 knee or hip replacements would you choose that we not do this year?’"

But Maione believes the IHA’s stance is driven less by financial considerations and more by a failure to appreciate the spiritual dimension of healthcare.

"They do not see the value of holistic healthcare, looking at the whole person," he says. "They don’t really see the bigger picture of how a faith system can contribute to the health and welfare of a patient."

At Kelowna General Hospital, the chaplain was replaced by a volunteer coordinator and local clergy volunteering on an on-call basis.

It is a model that health authority CEO Murray Ramsden wishes Kamloops would adopt. "We have a system that’s working well," he told Kelowna Capital News. "There’s been no complaints made to patient representatives, so why change it?"

But a large number of pastors strongly disagree. "In our opinion, Kelowna is not a working model for chaplaincy services," they state in a recent letter to the IHA. "It is contrary to good healthcare practice to have…no professional chaplain available."

As well, says Krueger, Royal Inland Hospital faces some unique situations that only a full-time, on-site chaplain can address.

"About a third of the patients don’t live anywhere near Kamloops," he says. "Chances are they don’t have any support network, and it takes a while to find their family and their faith affiliation, if they have one."

Maione points out that chaplains like Gundel are also specially trained in crisis intervention counselling. They help patients’ families cope with a range of difficult issues, including end-of-life decisions.

"There’s no way that we [pastors] can do the things that Viktor is doing. He is constantly working with crisis situations in the hospital, and he is there at the time that the crisis arises," says Maione.