The Chaplaincy Team at UHMBT is here to help meet the spiritual and religious needs of patients, their relatives and staff at the Trust. This can be done through direct contact with members of the Chaplaincy Team or by being put in contact with someone outside of the hospital, who can help meet a spiritual or religious need. This may be a local church leader, or an imam or other faith group leader, or a philosophical belief group.
The Trust has a team of three chaplains, a Lead Chaplain with overall responsibility and two site chaplains. As the Trust operates on 3 main sites there is a designated lead chaplain for each site. These are:
Rev Debbie Wilde - Site Lead Chaplain
Debbie belongs to the Methodist Diaconal Order. She has been with the Trust since 2018 and is deeply interested in the creative arts and spirituality, spiritual development throughout life and end of life care. She loves playing in orchestras, dancing and living and working in such a beautiful part of the world.
Telephone: 01229 403715
Rev Ian Dewar - Site Lead Chaplain and Lead Chaplain
Ian is an Anglican priest who grew up in Lancaster – attending Moorside Primary and Ripley. He now finds himself back home. Allotmenteer, bread maker, sports fan with a keen interest in Russia having been able to spend some time there just after the collapse of communism. As a former hospice chaplain, he has a particular interest in end of life care, and the power of stillness and silence to help people at critical points in life – not that he’s very quiet himself!
Telephone: 01524 519231
Rev Amy Bland – Site Lead Chaplain
Amy is an Anglican Priest who moved to work for the Trust in 2024, after time in a church in Chorley. She is particularly interested in how to help people feel heard and valued. She loves walking, swimming, climbing, and spending time with friends, and is enjoying life living in this part of the country.
Telephone: 01539 715571
All 3 site leads are supported by a team of volunteers who engage in ward visiting and/or acts of worship along with other projects as opportunity arises. All volunteers are interviewed by the respective site chaplain and receive training in order to be able to fulfil their role.
Services
The Chaplaincy Team at UHMBT engages in a whole range of projects. Much of their work is designed to create opportunity for reflection and meaningful conversation about life, healthcare and well-being.
Miscarriage and still birth support
This is a service that we run at Furness General Hospital and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. It is incredibly sad if you are in one moment excited about the thought of childbirth and the next stunned by a miscarriage or stillbirth.
The service offered by the Chaplaincy Team is a short reflective service, lasting just a few minutes. It consists of prayers and silence and is a chance to mark out respectfully a life that will remain unfulfilled. It can very often be the case that few people knew of the pregnancy and so, therefore, few people will appreciate the pain that such a loss brings.
The services for the Royal Lancaster Infirmary take place on a Thursday morning, and for Furness General and Westmorland General Hospitals as need arises.
Baby loss service
The Baby Loss Service is an annual event that takes place at both Furness General Hospital and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary in November. It is designed to help people to have space once a year to reflect on their loss and mark out what is a significant event in life with respect.
The service is not just for those who have had a loss in the preceding 12 months. Some people come back regularly and we are very aware that because of the way stillbirth and miscarriage has been handled in the past, that there may be many people of an older generation who may not have had the opportunity to grieve a loss. They are very welcome at this service.
The Furness General Hospital Baby Loss service takes place on the first Wednesday in December at 6:30pm in the Chapel.
The Royal Lancaster Infirmary Baby Loss service takes place on the fourth Sunday in November at 2pm at St Thomas' Church, Lancaster.
Remembrance service
Twice a year we hold Remembrance services both for Furness General Hospital and Royal Lancaster Infirmary. These services are an opportunity to remember those who have died. They are held at Furness General Hospital in April and October, and at Royal Lancaster Infirmary in May and October. The hospital bereavement team notify families of the next service, but you are welcome to come to any service.
The dates for Royal Lancaster Infirmary in 2025 are: 11th May and 19th October, 2pm at St Thomas’ Church Lancaster.
Finding the chapel
Furness General Hospital
The Chaplaincy Centre is central to the hospital next to the lifts and staircases. There are washing facilities, meeting rooms, a welcome area, main chapel and prayer rooms. The Centre is open 24/7 and patient visits, prayer and the sacraments are offered by arrangement with the Chaplaincy Team.
Royal Lancaster Infirmary
The chapel is in Medical Unit 1 on the ground floor. It is on the Bromley corridor, next to Neurophysiology and EEG. There is a multi-faith prayer room and chapel space. A bathroom is available in the chaplaincy. Holy Communion is taken to wards on Sunday.
Westmorland General Hospital
The chapel in on Level 2 close to the lifts and stairs. There is one space for all faiths to share. There is a bathroom next to chapel. Holy Communion is taken to wards as requested.
Projects and Services
The Chaplaincy Team at UHMBT engages in a whole range of projects. Much of their work is designed to create opportunity for reflection and meaningful conversation about life, healthcare and well-being.
Founded by Lead Chaplain Ian, there have been health festivals running across the Bay since 2016. Their aim is to create spaces and opportunities for people to have conversations with family, friends, neighbours, and with ourselves, to help us make simple changes that will have a big effect: rediscovering the art of living well. With fun activities, health checks and entertainment, they are a day out for the whole family and a chance to explore what it means to live well.
Every year in the UK, an organisation known as the Dying Matters Coalition organises what is called Dying Matters Week. This week is given over to highlighting the importance of thinking about death and dying for all of us in order to help us live better now.
The Chaplaincy Team, in partnership with the Palliative Care Team, takes part in the week in our respective areas.
Over the years, we’ve run a number of projects. We launched our #MyLastOrders cafes across the Trust. We hosted a debate on Physician Assisted Suicide called Life is all about Choices. We looked at Putting the Humanity back into Death. With Kate Brewer from Poppy’s funerals we looked at: How can we meet one of the great social challenges in our society – funeral poverty and dying well with a sustainable business?
'My Last Orders' is a project run by chaplaincy to help people talk about life and death, but hopefully with plenty of cake!
Essentially the chaplaincy team set up a café for group of people in the community such as local charities, 6th form pupils from local Secondary Schools or it is invited in to organisations.
The café supplies coffee and cake and people sit in small groups. They are given a set of cards with questions on from a pack called Grave Talk. These cards contain questions such as: ‘What is your greatest achievement?’ ‘What was your first experience of grief? People are simply asked to talk about these without the pressure to get a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer.
This café has now become part of the junior doctor training at the Trust and you can see more about the My Last Orders Cafe on Youtube.
If you’d like to find out how we can bring a death cafe to your group, please contact Ian at ian.dewar@mbht.nhs.uk
Anna Chaplaincy is a way of supporting older people emotionally and spiritually. In this Trust, Anna Chaplains are also hospital chaplaincy volunteers. They visit patients in hospital and can follow up spiritual and emotional care back in the community, if requested. They accompany older people in reflecting on their life and their relationship with God, breaking down generational barriers and offering friendship and community.
Over the years chaplaincy has undertaken and supported a number of research projects. these have included Mindfulness, Music, and currently involve Art as a Therapy, and the power of compassion to improve recovery and reduce costs in healthcare.