Rev. Marcia Marino on claiming your success

Best Practices of Chaplains: New APC Project Unveiled

“Best Practice”is a term used in several venues —health care, business, management, and information technology, among others. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS website provided a helpful definition of Best Practices: “Best Practice is the continuous process of learning, feedback, reflection, analysis, and documentation of experience and lessons learned —what works or does not work, and why.”The same website also noted: “Most Best Practices are success stories, at least in some respect.”(www.unaids.org/en/resources/publications/best+practice+collection.asp)

What are the Best Practices of chaplains? Have you created a new spiritual assessment tool that could be used for a patient who will be in the hospital for a one-day stay? Did your department create a storyboard that highlights this year’s Performance Improvement Project? Have you experimented with new ways of scheduling that are more efficient and more satisfying for chaplains? Have chaplains created some new workshops that have been well received by staff and/or community clergy? How are chaplains assisting staff members with their grief work? What new ideas for staff support have chaplains been offering in hospitals, long-term care settings, and correctional settings? How have chaplains been involved with pain clinics? What are chaplains doing with new advance directive forms? What are new projects being done by chaplains serving on ethics committees and/or institutional review boards (IRBs)?

Watch the Association of Professional Chaplains website (www.professionalchaplains.org) for a Best Practices Submission Form. The form will ask chaplains to submit a 100-150 word summary of their Best Practice. Chaplains will answer some questions about their Best Practice (e.g., What made you think of doing this Best Practice? How will the practice of chaplaincy be improved through this Best Practice? How do you know that this is an effective practice? Have you had any outcomes that are measurable? If so, please describe.). Chaplains will be asked to attach any articles that they have written about their Best Practice, and to attach a literature search if appropriate.

Best Practice submissions will be directed to the Best Practice Subcommittee of the APC Commission on Quality in Pastoral Services (Julie Berger, Alex Chamberlain, Sue Jelinek, and Marcia Marino, Chair). The Best Practice Subcommittee will recommend Best Practice Projects for inclusion on the APC website and in APC publications.

What is YOUR success story? Please consider sharing it with your colleagues. Watch the APC website, and prepare to submit your Best Practice to BestPractices@professionalchaplains.org.

Rev. Marcia Marino, BCC, D.Min. is the Regional Director of Pastoral Care for Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee. She chairs the Best Practices Subcommittee of the APC Commission on Quality of Pastoral Care Services. She spent a lot of time this summer watching the best practices of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Do you have thoughts about education & research you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.