Hudson Valley Hospital
TJ Douglas
J Douglas (they/them) is a Palliative Care Chaplain serving as site leader at NYP Hudson Valley Hospital. After completing their residency at NYP/Weill Cornell Medical Center in 2020, TJ became the inaugural Palliative Care Chaplain Fellow there in 2021. In this role, TJ practiced clinical work as part of the Palliative Care team, offering spiritual and emotional support to patients and families facing serious illness and end of life. TJ specialized in work on surgical ICU and oncology units, particularly the bone marrow transplant unit. Also, in this role, TJ was tasked with creating a facilitating a 12-hour curriculum between physician learners and chaplain learners around the role of spiritual care in healthcare setting. The success of the curriculum granted an extension of TJ’s role, which included presenting the curriculum in a 30-minute podium presentation in 2023’s AAHPM Annual Assembly. In 2023, TJ transferred to serve their local community at NYP Hudson Valley.
TJ is an interfaith chaplain. Their spirituality draws from contemplative, mystical, and wisdom traditions which emphasize impermanence, paradox, interconnectedness, love, mystery, and the natural world as grounds of sacredness. They earned their BA in Religion from Dartmouth College and their Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary with a focus on inter-religious engagement. TJ is a songwriter and sees a connection between their creative life and their call to chaplaincy: both are an effort to love and accompany others -and be accompanied in return- through the pain, wonder, and mystery of being alive. TJ was born and raised by the ocean in Portland, Maine, and now lives by the river in Peekskill, NY, with their wife Gracie and child Desmond.