THE CHAPLAIN AND THE DOCTOR – Review by Loren King
Jessica Zitter, a Pulmonary and Critical Care doctor on the Palliative Care unit of Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif., is also an accomplished author and documentary filmmaker. For her remarkable and inspiring film “The Chaplain & The Doctor,” Zitter turns the camera on herself and her colleague Betty Clark, an 80-year-old chaplain and grief counselor, as they perform their duties for the diverse population in the large public hospital.
The film is both a fly-on-the-wall look at the daily struggles, wins and losses on the hospital floor and a human portrait of two warriors on the front lines. When we first meet Zitter, who is middle aged, white and Jewish from a long line of doctors; and Clark, a Black woman who grew up in the Jim Crow South and holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, they seem to be from very different worlds performing different missions. But quickly we see how the women work together in a balance of medicine and spirituality to treat seriously ill and dying patients who are often fearful, angry and sometimes in extreme physical pain.
Their approach is so effective that it’s surprising to learn that chaplains and doctors do not usually pair up within the strict demarcations of hospital roles. Zitter admits that even she, at first, didn’t understand the real benefit of Clark’s work. But it did not take long before Zitter saw first-hand how patients responded to Clark’s gentle compassion and care. Under Clark’s down to earth guidance, Zitter also began to understand the complexity of systemic racial bias in medicine particularly when Clark shares her own traumatic experience after giving birth to her daughter.
We see patients frustrated by how long they must wait for treatment and tests; others who feel dismissed by doctors. One young woman, in severe pain from sickle cell anemia, tells Zitter and Clark that she avoids requesting pain medication because of the shame when medical staff treat her as an addict wanting drugs. These real life experiences have made Zitter a more humane doctor and therefore a better doctor.
What’s most moving about the film is how it portrays the deepening professional trust as well as personal friendship between Clark and Zitter. When Clark suffers her own stress-related health crisis, Zitter is there as both medical professional and caring friend. Zitter goes to Israel for a wedding that coincides with the terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023 when she’s forced to evacuate. When she returns home shaken by the experience and full of self-doubt, Clark is there to listen, offer wisdom and dispense a loving hug.
Zitter is among the many guests who gather for Clark’s raucous 80th birthday party with the guest of honor and those in attendance sporting various shades of purple. What’s being celebrated is more than a milestone and well-lived life. Together, these two skilled and dynamic women have made a difference in each other’s lives; in the lives and deaths of countless patients and their families; and to the medical profession itself.
