Trained and supervised
Clinical pastoral formation with credentialing, case supervision and continuing education, on the same cohort model as the clinical tracks.
Spiritual care
Faith is not a complication to work around. It is where most patients start.
A health system in Nigeria that treats religion as an obstacle spends its energy fighting the community it exists to serve. CHHI trains chaplains as clinical professionals and puts them inside the team.
Why chaplaincy is core, not optional.
In most of Nigeria the pastor, imam or elder is consulted before the clinic is — sometimes months before. A health system that treats that as an obstacle spends its energy fighting the community it is trying to serve. CHHI treats it as the existing referral network, and trains inside it.
Illness in this region is interpreted spiritually by most patients and most families, long before it is interpreted clinically. That shapes when someone presents, whether they adhere to treatment, how a family decides about surgery, and what a bereavement does to the people left behind. A clinician who cannot engage with that is working with one hand tied.
It also runs the other way. Rural clinical work carries moral weight — the maternal death you could not prevent, the referral that arrived too late, the family that could not pay. Debriefing that is not a benefit. It is retention infrastructure.
How it works
Five commitments the service is held to.
- Invited, never imposedA chaplain is offered and can be declined without any effect on the care a patient receives. Consent is asked for out loud and recorded.
- Every faith, and noneChristian, Muslim, traditional practice, and patients who want nothing to do with any of it. The service adapts to the patient; the patient is not asked to adapt to the service.
- Trained, not improvisedFormation in clinical pastoral practice, bereavement, medical ethics, confidentiality and the boundary between spiritual support and clinical advice — with supervision and credentialing.
- Clinically integratedChaplains round with the team, take referrals, document what belongs in the record and nothing that does not, and hand back to the clinicians when a spiritual concern turns out to be a medical one.
- For the clinicians tooRural clinical work carries a moral weight that burns people out. Debrief after a maternal death is not a luxury; it is retention infrastructure.
Inclusive by construction
Christian, Muslim, traditional, and none.
Northern deployment is planned with Muslim faith leaders in the room from the first meeting, not consulted after the fact. Southern and eastern sites work with churches and with traditional leaders who remain, in practice, the first call for a great many families. Patients who want none of it are asked once and not asked again.
The name CHHI carries — Chinedozi, from the Igbo for God restores — is the founding family's, and it describes an intention rather than a condition of entry. Nobody is asked what they believe before they are treated.
Documented consent
Chaplaincy is offered, the answer is recorded, and a decline carries no consequence for the care that follows.
Referral both ways
Clinicians refer spiritual distress; chaplains refer anything that turns out to be clinical, immediately and without editorialising.
Team support
Structured debrief after critical incidents and deaths, for clinicians and for community health workers.
Chaplains train in the same cohorts as the clinicians.
Pastors, imams, traditional leaders and lay chaplains seeking clinical pastoral formation — the intake runs with each clinical cohort.