Fr Martin Geraghty, a chaplain at the Mater Hospital, Dublin, spends his days caring for the sick and the dying.
I've been a hospital chaplain for 27 years now, working alternately in Perth, Australia, and the Mater Hospital here. Hospitals are the same everywhere - the surroundings, the staff and the specialities may vary but people who are sick are sick. The needs of people are the same.
My day starts off with five to 10 minutes of prayer when I take over from the night chaplain at 8.30am. Sometimes the prayer is spontaneous or sometimes taken from a book like the Glenstal Book of Prayer, which I like.
The night chaplain and I meet the three lay chaplains who have volunteered for ward duty that day and we spend half an hour talking about patients and sharing information.
After that, my bleeper usually starts and I'm kept busy until midday, answering calls from the ward chaplains or nursing staff or relatives of patients who are requesting the blessing of the sick before surgery.
We have Mass at 1pm every day so I usually go down to the chapel before then to say my own private prayers. Mass is broadcast around the hospital on television and on the sound system. Then we have Holy Communion rounds on the wards.
After that, I usually have a cup of tea before I begin my ward rounds. I spend most of the afternoon visiting patients who have asked to see me, sitting by the bedside talking to people but generally listening and praying gentle prayers with them.
After tea, I usually see the patients who are going for major heart surgery. They like to have the sacrament of the sick, pray and speak about their own journey, their families and their faith. Sometimes people want to confess and I find a discreet corner where there is privacy.
For me, the most fulfilling part of my job is giving the sacrament of the sick to somebody before they go for a major operation and noticing the sense of peace that they seem to have.
You can never allot a time to spend with people; everybody's needs are different. Some people talk for five minutes, others an hour, but I'm always available and I'm always there to listen. That is what my job is about because the chaplain will have more time to sit and be with a patient than anybody else.
Every patient has some moment of reflection on their religious life or spirituality in hospital and often people's personal relationship with God or their faith is reawakened while they're there. Someone might say to me: "I had time to think, Father. I've said a few prayers, I haven't said them in a while, but there's something in it, Father."
Often staff will ask me to pray for them as well; they'll say it's very busy in their department or they may be facing exams. Staff are very involved in our annual memorial services. We have several ecumenical services around Christmas and Masses in memory of patients who died during the year in different specialities like casualty, oncology, day care and intensive care. There is also Mass on the first Friday of every month for the repose of the souls of those who died the previous month.
Although death is part of my job - quite often I'm with a person when they're dying and it is difficult, especially if they have been in hospital for a long time and you have built up a relationship with them - the most challenging part of my job is seeing young people die. When an elderly person is dying, there's sadness but it is somehow in the order of things. But when a child dies, you feel there's an injustice. You wonder why.
In an interview with Niamh Kavanagh