As professional chaplains we need to be in dialogue with each other about what we do, how we do it, and why we do it a certain way and how these practices benefit our patients. The ultimate goal of MyPractice is to build a consensus about what constitutes “good practice” and eventually establish “Standards of Practice” for chaplains. As with quality improvements in our institutions, this is an ongoing process in order to improve our practice.

To have a description of a practice that you use in your setting considered for inclusion here, write it up and send it to PlainViews for consideration. The Association of Professional Chaplain's Quality Commission’s Best Practice Committee will work with the Managing Editor of PlainViews to review submissions and select articles for publication. Your submission does not necessarily need to be cutting edge (although that’s okay, too). We want to identify “good practices” that could be recognized as standard practice.

PlainViews will highlight one article in the second issue of each month. Readers are invited to respond to the featured practice. Responses will be posted as they are received. This is a great opportunity to start a process that will move us forward in professional chaplaincy.

If you’d like to respond to MyPractice, please send a comment of no more than 400 words. You can use the e-form below (click on "hearing from you," link) or submit your commentary to the editor in the body of an e-mail (or as a Microsoft Word attachment) sent to Info@PlainViews.org. Please put the phrase “MyPractice” in your subject line.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Responses for Caring for the Caregivers E-Journal

Great to hear from John about the E-Journal, it’s rise, fall and rising again in a different form. Here at Norton Healthcare in Louisville we share a corporate internet doorway, which used to be called the “Portal” and now has been snappily renamed, “The Nsider.” If you are going to the internet from any company computer, you get this page. Near the top of that page each day the Pastoral Care Department posts two items. The first is a daily prayer (from a variety of traditions, though more often Christian) and the second is a weekly reflection written by a member of our Pastoral Staff, with an email link to that chaplain. From the feedback we get we have learned that many of our employees do not start their day without first reading the prayer. And it is not uncommon to receive as many as a dozen emails from complete strangers who have read the meditation on any given week. We also have a department of Church and Health Ministries which reaches out to area churches and faith groups to promote health ministries and parish nursing. Their monthly newsletter also has a spiritual piece in it which is usually written by one of our chaplains.

Finding ways to remain continually on the front page of the corporate culture and in our coworker’s daily awareness is one way to strengthen pastoral presence and identity in our hospitals. Nothing replaces our daily presence in our patients’ rooms, but these and other tactics raise awareness and increase our accessibility to a broader group readily.

The Rev. Whit Stodghill, BCC
Episcopal Chaplain
Norton Hospital
Louisville, KY

Caring for the Caregivers E-Journal

In 2004, as the Director of a new Pastoral Care Department, I sought a corporate sanctioned space to remind my medical center family that it's the relational that binds us together – not just the tasks that drive us to excellence in patient care and evidence-based medicine. I sought uncontested ground that was paperless, practical, and accessible by most; whose scope would respect the dignity and spirituality of all persons. I did not have a "pulpit to preach from" in this non-sectarian institution, so I created a virtual one – the bi-monthly Caring for the Caregivers E-Journal was born.

For two years, the journal received praise from the entire community. As I made rounds in those early years, I was formally introduced to new colleagues who met me through the in-reach work of the letter. Anecdotal stories revealed that the journal "captured what was missing organizationally spiritually," as one said and hit an institutional nerve that reverberated far beyond the work place as it was forwarded to spouses, kids, and relatives because "it was so helpful." Our Food and Nutrition Services had advance notice in preparing meals sensitive to specific religious holidays because of reading the Interfaith Calendar – a part of the journal. Staff was made acutely aware that there was more to the world of faith and meaning-making than their usual suspects of Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism. At best, the E-Journal served as a strategic calling card of compassion, education and introduction to an institutional culture that had yet to meet me in person or embrace the ministry of professional chaplaincy I represent.

Change is inevitable. After two years without one complaint, an administrative decision was made to decrease e-mail traffic. A periodical without circulation is a dead periodical. For the next twelve months the "E-Journal" vanished. I mourned its untimely death with members of its readership. Yet I understood that it was an idea whose time had come and possibly passed as the organization brought on-line its own e-news letter. My goal operationally is to be in the moment and give my attention, energy and dollars to those things which are most meaningful, and have the greatest impact; discarding the rest.

In January 2008, the E-Journal was back as part of the revitalization effort of our primary corporate newsletter – The Vassar Voice (VV). The VV is produced monthly and hard copies are made available house-wide and mailed to our physicians, internal departments and board members. It is now featured prominently as part of our mainstream sanctioned discourse with a wider readership. While changed, its core remains – the story-theology part. As Howard Thurman said, "people recognize the voice of the genuine in others." The story still stirs the human soul and resonates as deeply as before.

The driving force of the E-Journal, now subsumed in the primary media forum, keeps the light of spiritual care shining in our corporate window. It provides balance along side our quality accomplishments. It reaches persons and places I often cannot and builds bridges to cross when I arrive.

Send your comments about MyPractice to info@PlainViews.org.