When Sheila Drohan was diagnosed with breast cancer nearly four years ago, she had to decide if she could practice what she preached.

Drohan, the director of pastoral services at Martin Memorial Health Systems based in Stuart, was forced to come to grips with her own mortality after years of helping others face theirs.

“I went through surgery and chemo and radiation and that kind of, as with every patient, brought your mortality right in front of you,” Drohan said. “I had to decide, was what I was saying as a chaplain just professional words or did I really believe them? I had to come to terms with my own faith.”

If that was a test of her beliefs, it was one Drohan passed. And now she’s trying to pass those lessons on to the people she counsels every day. She is fully aware of the importance of spirituality not only for the patients and families that come through the doors, but for the clinical personnel that are there to care for them.

“Spirituality is there for all of us,” Drohan said. “We may approach our spirituality a little bit differently, but acknowledging that there is something greater than ourselves is important. That’s one of the things as a chaplain, you notice when there is a critical illness a lot of those denominational lines fall to the wayside. It’s a person’s spirituality that you touch.”

Paulette Craft agrees that spirituality is an important component of health care. An oncology social worker for 20 years, Craft has watched as people grappled with their beliefs following a cancer diagnosis and through difficult struggles with the disease. That’s why she believes working with patients’ spirituality has become an important element of their care.

“Part of our job as social workers is to address the whole person, and part of that is spirituality,” she said. “I think we’ll be addressing it more in the future and that we’ll find it’s more a part of our whole person, to our health and well-being, than we’ve thought before.”

It’s also important to the people taking care of patients as well.

As Kendra Copeland, CCRN, sat in an office at Martin Memorial Medical Center speaking philosophically about the role of spirituality in health care, an announcement on the hospital intercom interrupted the conversation with a dose of reality.

A code 99 had been called for a patient on the second floor and Copeland, stationed in the ICU, had to respond to the cardiac arrest. However the patient, an elderly man who had been in and out of the hospital as his condition deteriorated, passed away despite the staff’s efforts.

Copeland had gotten to know the man and his family during his many visits to the hospital and his passing touched her. A 23-year nursing veteran, Copeland said her own spirituality plays a big role in coping with the things she sees at work.

“You have to be comfortable with it within yourself,” she said. “You don’t try to sway people with your beliefs. I feel very comfortable with my own beliefs. That helps me deal with it.”