Dr. Diane Bridges on Creating Multifaith Resources

Culturally Sensitive Religious & Spiritual Care: Creating Resources

Trillium Acute Care Health Centre, comprising approximately 800 inpatient beds and numerous outpatient clinics, resides in a very diverse cultural catchment area. 49% of the people in our region are not Canadian born. This provides many challenges and opportunities for ministering to patients and staff alike.

In an effort to celebrate this diversity from a spiritual and religious perspective, our chaplaincy team (another multifaith chaplain and I) met with staff, volunteers, and members of our multifaith council community to determine how we could best integrate culturally sensitive practices into our provision of spiritual care.

We wanted to learn about the spiritual and religious issues at a grass roots level and how we might begin to address them. Staff told us they wanted to learn more about the needs and beliefs of patients as they relate to health care, especially in matters concerning crisis around birth, death, organ and tissue donation, sterilization, dietary needs, blood transfusions, and conflicts in belief systems. They expressed a need for access to language translation manuals and quick information on bereavement care, end-of-life issues, and funeral protocols for various cultures. They also wanted to learn to assess patients’ risk of spiritual distress and guidelines to help them make timely and appropriate referrals.

The chaplaincy department did not distribute questionnaires. Instead, we spoke personally with staff over lunch, on their units, and during education rounds. We brought our concerns forward to our spiritual and religious care multifaith council for guidance and assistance. We spoke to our volunteers on an individual basis and at our quarterly open forums. We discovered that much of the necessary work simply required dedicated energy to garner already existing resources and to compile all the information for rapid access.

Part of our plan was to create an in-house web page where we could systematically publish our collated information. We also wanted an attractive hard copy of an educational tool for our volunteers and staff to have on hand for study sessions, personal use, and as an orientation guide to improve their understanding of the health care team’s expectations of them with respect to, for example, accountability, confidentiality, etc.

Our Muslim volunteer, a member of our multifaith council, championed a simple question-and-answer translation manual. This would enable staff and patients to point to questions in Arabic and give yes and no answers. We eventually had 26 languages translated and posted on our web page so that staff could print these out on their units as needed. The faith beliefs and practices of the major religious groups, their bereavement and funeral resources, and our newsletter, were all added to our web page.

With help from our hospital organizational development team, we were able to create a three-ring binder divided into three sections: Orientation Guide, Addressing Spiritual Well Being, and Multi Faith Practices.

Over the past year, we have been very encouraged by positive responses. Referrals from staff indicate that they understand better how to acknowledge, assess, and refer people at risk for spiritual distress. Many say that they are feeling more comfortable in including spiritual care in a patient’s care plan. They feel that being able to “click on” to spiritual and religious care information on the computer saves valuable time.

Similarly, volunteers are stretching their learning base, and people in our community say that their needs for sensitive cultural and religious care are being integrated into their recovery process.

This is encouraging for all of us. The bottom line is that when we understand the needs of our multifaith community, we can ensure in advance that roadblocks do not prevent religious and culturally sensitive care.

(If you are interested in purchasing the manual, please contact Diane at DBridges@nt.thc.on.ca )

Before You Burn Out!
Clergy Case-conference Groups

It may come as a surprise (or not) that clergy are not very good at taking care of themselves. Whether for parish clergy or chaplains in institutions, self-care often suffers in the ministry of serving others. As a result, clergy are vulnerable not only to exhaustion and burn-out but, perhaps more insidiously, ineffectiveness as religious leaders.

I encountered the latter several years ago while serving as a team member of the Conflict Transformation Taskforce of the Baltimore/Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. It became obvious to me that many of the parish conflict situations we faced grew out of clergy ineffectiveness. This confirmed previous collaboration with the late Dr. Edwin Friedman (author of Generation to Generation – a systems approach to local congregations) which points to the fact that when clergy become anxious, depressed, or distracted, the ripple effects of their emotional state can be felt throughout the community they serve.

My observations led me to initiate clergy case conference groups. These groups were modeled after peer supervisory meetings among pastoral counselors — but modified to be oriented toward parish clergy. I discovered that clergy (at least the non-defensive ones) were hungry for such peer interaction. Although they usually function within some kind of community, and even work closely with other colleagues in larger churches (for pastors) or institutions (for chaplains), clergy for the most part operate in isolation from each other. For whatever reason, clergy share very little with each other even within multiple staff situations, especially when things are not going well. And for clergy who work in solo contexts (rural churches or small institutions) the isolation can be even greater. Yes, there are those occasional cluster or district gatherings, but little real sharing happens there. As a result these faith leaders are left to their own devices or to occasional skills workshops.

The case conference model counters such isolation. Its success proves that clergy can work together safely and confidentially to enhance their self-awareness, and their relational and leadership skills through a very hands-on, collaborative, and supportive small-group process.

In one such group, for example, a clergywoman shared her experience of being intimidated by a “bully” couple in her church. She feared confrontation, yet noted that the entire congregation was pulling back and morale was dropping. She knew she had to do something. With the encouragement of the group and some rehearsed interchanges, she began setting better boundaries with the couple and holding firm. The couple eventually left the church and, like the munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz,” suddenly all of the congregants began coming out of their hiding places and taking charge again.

I recently morphed these in-person groups into teleconferencing groups, thus making this casework accessible throughout North America (and beyond). The use of simple phone bridge lines and PIN’s has allowed pastors and chaplains across the country to connect with each other. In some cases rural conferences and clusters of chaplains are considering this model as an efficient means of providing peer supervision. One clergyperson from Alaska recently wrote me, “We have used teleconferencing for Presbytery and Diocesan business for many years in ways folks outside (of Alaska) think impossible or undesirable (and it) works very, very well – much more efficient and productive… (and) one of the greatest benefits: the technology does not allow two people to talk at once.” Leave it to the Alaskans to be ahead of the curve!

As the challenges to pastors and chaplains mount in our increasingly anxious culture, perhaps clergy case teleconferencing can be an effective and supportive means of leadership skill enhancement and an antidote to clergy burn-out.

Reviews

Macky Alston reviews the film Muslims

“Muslims”

The mistrust of and focus on Islam grew exponentially in America after September 11th, though it appears that many Americans actually knew little about Muslims and their beliefs.

How does the Islamic faith shape their lives and their politics? Do the majority of Muslims live in patriarchal and authoritarian societies? In the film Muslims, Executive Producers Alvin Perlmutter and Anisa Mehdi travel to Iran, Nigeria, Egypt, Malaysia, Turkey, and the United States in search of the answers to these questions, and some startling facts emerge.

Are you aware that while one-fifth of the world’s population is Muslim, only 13% of Muslims are Arabs? Or that the majority of the Muslim scholars who issue fatwahs, or religious rulings, consider family issues such as divorce to be the greatest problems facing their constituencies, and that they are irritated that men such as Osama Bin Laden, who are not scholars of Islamic text, issue fatwahs? Did you know that the majority of scholars do not consider politics and religion separately, because they view Muhammad as both a prophet and a statesman, but do believe that Islam can co-exist in a Democratic society? Or that the Islamic stand on abortion is that it is forbidden unless the mother’s health is in danger?

These are just some of the facts conveyed through interviews with Islamic scholars, political scientists, history professors, lawyers, high school principals and feminists, among others. They provide insights into the lives of all Muslims, and it is the focus on the daily issues faced by American Muslims that will be of value to individuals involved in pastoral care.

For those who minister to the Muslim population, this documentary illuminates the different Islamic cultural milieus in this country and the range of convictions held by those who practice the faith. As a viewer, I came away with a much clearer understanding of the goals and desires of Muslims, and of the beliefs that guide their daily practices and rituals.

Tensions are increasing between Muslims and Westerners, and the need for interfaith understanding is underscored in this film. As one Muslim says: “This is a struggle that matters. The world is a small place. Ideas travel more fully among people and across borders. Battles once distant now have consequence for people everywhere.”

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