Former Mission chaplain: “The moral injury that is happening there daily is staggering”
HCA sale upended pastoral care, she says; hospital values service, spokesperson says
ASHEVILLE WATCHDOG | Reported by ANDREW R. JONES
March 1, 2024
Missy Harris, a co-pastor for the Circle of Mercy congregation in East Asheville, served as a part-time chaplain at Mission Hospital from 2018 to 2023. // Watchdog photos by Starr Sariego
The following article by Andrew R. Jones appeared in Asheville Watchdog on March 1st, 2024
For four and a half years, the Rev. Missy Harris’s night job put her inside one of the most exhausting, high-pressure places one can work: a hospital emergency department.
Harris, a co-pastor for the Circle of Mercy congregation in East Asheville, initially loved her work as a chaplain at Mission Hospital. Then HCA Healthcare bought Mission in 2019 for $1.5 billion.
Her 12- to- 15-hour, twice-weekly shift, which she said she had viewed as “holy and sacred,” became one of the most difficult things she’d ever experienced, she said.
“The moral injury that is happening there daily is staggering,” she told Asheville Watchdog in an exclusive interview. “It was a job that I deeply loved and was so committed to this community and region. I miss it. I miss it so much. It’s heartbreaking, honestly, to me that I had to step out of it, but I had to for my own health.”
Harris started working at then-nonprofit Mission in late 2018. She left last May after deciding she could no longer endure what she says were untenable scheduling pressures while working with an overburdened and under-resourced hospital staff.
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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Andrew R. Jones is a Watchdog investigative reporter. Email arjones@avlwatchdog.org.
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