Chaplain Malpractice Insurance

What Is Chaplain Malpractice Insurance?

The term chaplain malpractice insurance refers to a form of liability insurance that covers chaplains, priests, and other clergy members. Chaplain malpractice insurance is designed to provide comprehensive and flexible coverage to protect the reputations, professional licenses, and assets of insured individuals. This type of insurance generally covers claims made against a professional for counseling services that a clergy member may provide to their congregants. The amount of coverage often depends on an individual's scope of work and the size of the congregation.

How Chaplain Malpractice Insurance Works

Malpractice insurance is a form of liability insurance that covers certain professionals, traditionally providing legal protection for health care workers. Doctors, nurses, and others in the field with malpractice insurance are covered against lawsuits filed by patients and/or their families who may seek damages because of the professional's negligence or intentional actions, or in the event of a patient's death.

This kind of coverage is now available to professionals in many different sectors. Just as medical malpractice insurance covers health care workers, these policies are tailored to the specific duties of the insured individuals like lawyers, financial professionals, corporate officers and directors, and even clergy members.

While not considered to be in the same professional field as a therapist or psychologist, chaplains, priests, and other clergy members are often called upon to counsel congregation members. Counseling responsibilities may relate to marriage and family matters, but may also include other types of privileged exchanges of information between the clergy and other individuals and groups. 

The nature of this sensitive role puts clergy members up for risk of litigation, especially if their actions negatively impact a congregant. Insurance provides coverage against malpractice claims caused during counseling activities — unintentional or otherwise. Policies protect the assets and licenses, along with the religious and professional reputations of clergy members. As noted above, the amount of coverage and the premiums paid by the insured depends on where they're located, the nature of their roles, and how many congregants they serve.

Chaplain malpractice insurance is also called pastoral insurance, church insurance, or priest malpractice insurance.

Special Considerations

Because the threat of malpractice lawsuits from counseling services may be relatively limited in frequency, not all clergy members may be aware that they are exposed to the same risk of malpractice lawsuits that other non-clergy professionals face.

The risks are greater for clergies who provide counseling services outside religious facilities and may visit patients in hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical centers. For instance, a patient may complain to a chaplain about mistreatment in a nursing home. That person's family may end up suing the chaplain for not alerting someone about the allegations.

Chaplain malpractice insurance provides similar coverage to counseling liability insurance purchased by therapists, psychologists, social workers, and other professionals who provide counseling services as part of their regular job duties.

Types of Chaplain Malpractice Insurance Coverage

Though this isn't an exhaustive list, chaplain malpractice insurance typically includes the following coverages: