TAMPA, Fla. — Shift change at Tampa General Hospital (TGH) is a critical time for information to pass from one group of staff to another - including the chaplains.

What You Need To Know

  • Tampa General Hospital chaplain Joon Park has worked as a chaplain at TGH for nine years 

  • Culture and heritage often play a role in how people grieve, according to Park

  • Park recently wrote a book called "As Long As You Need - Permission to Grieve," which is part memoir, part hospital stories and part guide

“I feel weary but also wonderful and fantastic. All the feelings," said Chaplain Joon Park of Tampa General Hospital. 

He sits in a room feet from the hospital chapel, surrounded by other chaplains of many faiths. 

“There has been a change in his prognosis, and so now it is going to be a sacrament of the sick slash last rites,” said another chaplain. 

Park has worked at Tampa General for almost nine years. 

“I knew the first day of internship that I wanted to go for the long haul. I loved it. I love it even more today than I did the first day,” said Park. 

A lot guided him to this faith-based career, and not all of those experiences were good. 

“I grew up in a very tumultuous and unpredictable household with some abuse, with some violence,” said Park. “I’m a child of immigrants and I know my parents. They tried their best with what they knew how, like we say. And they unfortunately, because of not having resources and capacity, weren’t able to break their cycle of violence.”

Born and raised in Florida, Park likes to say he is a Korean Floridian. He was also brought up in a home with parents who wanted him to know his heritage and culture. 

“The beauty of our culture, so much of it is celebrating and holding sorrow at the same time,” said Park.

As a chaplain, Park knows that heritage plays a role in how people process their grief. There is no shortage of tears in hospitals. 

“I think there’s so much about grief that culturally and socially, we’re told to let go, turn the page, move on. That we’re just supposed to bury the average workplace manual in America. We’ll say you get four days of bereavement if you lose someone. The last place I worked, it was two days, but in my own Korean culture, I learned to fully embrace loss,” said Park. 

Park keeps his faith and culture close. He even wears a norigae — a traditional Korean accessory that is both pendant and good-luck charm — when he works, pinned to his chest.

“I wear it to work pretty much all the time,” said Park. “It’s a reminder for me of my culture. And also it’s about holding the celebration and sorrow at the same time.”

Park recently wrote a book called "As Long As You Need - Permission to Grieve."

It is part memoir, part hospital stories and part guide. He hopes it can help people find strength through dark days.