Improve Your Caregiving Skills: Register Now for Fall/Spring Spiritual Education Classes

Become a better caregiver by expanding your skills in an interfaith and interdisciplinary setting: HealthCare Chaplaincy’s Center for Continuing and Professional Education is now accepting applications for its 2011 Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Fall and Spring Programs.

Clinical Pastoral Education is an adult-experiential learning process. Through an action-learning model of education under supervision, students work together to develop their caregiving skills and spiritual/pastoral expertise.

The program involves developing individual learning goals, visiting patients/families, clinical practice, lectures, individual and small group supervision, and reflection on the integration of theory, practice and personal experience.

Students can include laypersons, seminarians, ordained clergy, social workers, nurses and physicians.

Classes are limited to no more than 8 students each to provide maximum teacher/student interaction. The course requires 100 hours of classroom work which is generally a “class day” of 5 hours spread over 20 weeks and 300 hours of practicum work which is based in one of our partner hospital settings.

For the fall term from September 2011 through January 2012 we have a limited number of spaces still available. The spring term begins in February and ends in May.

Topics for study and discussion include cultural diversity, spiritual assessment tools, theological reflection, responding to crisis situations, conflict management, family systems theory, leadership training, group facilitation, as well as the development of listening/communication skills and grief counseling.

HealthCare Chaplaincy is the oldest and largest multifaith center in the United States for the education of those involved in caregiving and pastoral care. Our programs are accredited by the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE).

Admissions Process

To apply, use the online application form from our website here.

For inquiries, please contact the Registrar at (212) 644-1111, extension 219 or registrar@healthcarechaplaincy.org.

An application fee of $50 is required. Three recommendations are required. Submit all application materials and a check or money order, payable to HealthCare Chaplaincy, to:

Registrar
HealthCare Chaplaincy
307 East 60th Street
New York, NY 10022

Criteria for admission include the ability to provide spiritual care to others in intensive situations and to remain open to learning through an action-reflection educational model. Students include seminarians, clergy, members of religious orders, and qualified laity. An applicant is accepted only after close assessment of essays, recommendations, and an admissions interview.

Tuition

Tuition is $850 per unit for new students.

Hospital Patients Are More Satisfied When Care Includes Discussions of Spirituality or Religion

by Anthony Cirillo

Editor’s note: This is adapted from the piece “Patient experience defines quality” which appeared in the August 2, 2011 edition of the Health Impact blog.

A Duke University Fuqua School of Business study has compared patient satisfaction surveys with clinical performance measures to see which is a better gauge of clinical quality.

Researchers measured 30-day readmission rates at roughly 2,500 hospitals and found that patient satisfaction scores were more closely linked with fewer 30-day readmissions than clinical performance measures.

"If you want to figure out if a hospital is providing high-quality care, asking patients if they were satisfied with their care is a better indicator than whether the staff competently performs a battery of tests," co-author Richard Staelin, professor of business administration at Fuqua, said in a release.

What struck me was that hospitals that scored highly on patient satisfaction with discharge planning also tended to have the lowest number of patients return within a month. The authors recommended hospitals that wish to improve their clinical performance focus on improving the interactions between patients and hospital staff.

To me, a great last impression is not only good for HCAHPS⁽¹⁾ scores. That last impression usually involves discharge planning, and when you get it right through education and communication, patients will follow the instructions and not end up back in the hospital.

	Chaplain Sister Margaret Oettinger O.P. visits with a patient at Hospital for Special Surgery

More evidence: A recent HealthGrades report showed modest gains in patient satisfaction based on data from 3,800 hospitals measured between April 2009 and March 2010. It noted that 81 percent of patients said they were most satisfied at the time of hospital discharge because they received instructions.

So then add this wrinkle: A study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that 41 percent of inpatients desired a discussion of religion/spirituality concerns while hospitalized, but only half of those reported having such a discussion. Overall, 32 percent of inpatients reported having a discussion of their religion/spirituality concerns. Religious patients and those experiencing more severe pain were both more likely to desire and to have discussions of spiritual concerns.

What's more, patients who had discussions of religion/spirituality concerns were more likely to rate their care at the highest level on four different measures of patient satisfaction, regardless of whether or not they had desired such a discussion. These data suggest that many more inpatients desire conversations about religion/spirituality than have them. Healthcare professionals might improve patients' overall experience with being hospitalized, as well as patient satisfaction, by addressing this unmet patient need.

So there you have it. That's more evidence that it really is the total hospital experience that matters. So why do we continue to ignore that there are financial implications for poor patient experience?

⁽¹⁾ The HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey is the first national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patients' perspectives of hospital care. HCAHPS (pronounced “H-caps”) is a survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients’ perceptions of their hospital experience.

Let us Prey.
The Victimizing of the Elderly

by Malya Kurzweil Levin

Editor’s note: In the June 30th issue of HealthCare Chaplaincy Today, Judith Hancock wrote an article entitled “Financial Abuse of the Elderly: A Hidden Crime.” For additional perspective on this important topic, we asked Malya Kurzweil Levin, a legal intern at the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention, to write this story for HealthCare Chaplaincy Today. 

Elderly people lose $2.6 billion dollars annually to financial abuse, according to a March 2009 MetLife Mature Market Institute study. At the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention, the nation’s first emergency elder abuse shelter, most of our clients are referred to us for more recognized forms of abuse, but once here we invariably discover that they have been victims of financial abuse as well.

As older people’s physical and cognitive abilities decline, they become more dependent on others and consequently more vulnerable to abuse. Family, friends and caregivers account for nearly half of these incidents, which are often complicated when the abuser is struggling with mental illness or drug and alcohol abuse and has become financially dependent on the elderly victim. Additionally, family members often rationalize elder abuse by telling themselves they will pay back what they have taken or that they deserve compensation for caring for the victim.

Other common sources of exploitation are unscrupulous professionals such as financial advisors or lawyers, as well as business or commercial organizations that lure the elderly with phony investments, property transfer scams, Internet cons, or solicitation of information later used to perpetrate identity theft. Such abusers are skilled at building trust with an elderly victim in order to exploit that relationship and prey on universal desires that are exacerbated in the elderly: to remain financially independent, feel special, get a good deal and please others.

Research shows that despite the staggering amount of financial abuse being perpetrated against the elderly, five out of six cases go unreported.  Among the reasons why an older person might not report their own abuse are: fear of government intervention; fear of being put in a nursing home; a desire to protect their abuser;  feeling they are responsible for what has happened; or not realizing that abuse has actually occurred.

Eldercare professionals are also often remiss about reporting suspected incidents, often because they are not sure of the line between abuse and a bad business decision, because they cannot determine the exact level of competency of the suspected victim, or because they do not want to compromise their relationship with a client.

A report followed by an investigation whenever there are indicators of possible abuse is the only way to ensure that a vulnerable elderly person does not continue to suffer alone. Increased social isolation is both a risk factor and a signal of financial abuse, and we at the Weinberg Center have learned that careful listening, consistent monitoring and conscientious reporting are the most effective ways to detect and prevent this phenomenon.

Other signs of financial abuse include the presence of a new “close friend” without whom an elderly person is suddenly reluctant to speak with others; mention of “lost” property or assets; changes in banks, attorneys, or spending patterns; and medical bills that someone else was responsible for managing that are going unpaid. Additionally, an elderly person’s sudden inability to afford basic necessities may indicate that they have fallen victim to financial exploitation.

What an Aspiring Physician Learned
at HealthCare Chaplaincy

by Alexander Lloyd

In July 2010 I joined HealthCare Chaplaincy for a one year long fellowship thanks to the Dartmouth College Partners in Community Service Program.

The program’s purpose is to provide support and access to students seeking careers in organizations working for the common good.

As an undergraduate religion major pursuing pre-medical studies, I envisioned the fellowship at HealthCare Chaplaincy to be the perfect match for my own academic interests. Having written a thesis advocating for the inclusion of religion and spirituality in conversations about health, I was excited to be selected for a postion that would complement and support my own vision of where health care needs to go.

My expectations were more than exceeded during my twelve months which concluded in early July.

I was afforded the opportunity to work on a variety of projects that have given me a broad understanding of the ways spirituality and health intersect and the ways in which I might bring this knowledge into my own future practice as a physician.

I have worked most directly on HealthCare Chaplaincy’s initiative to create the National Center for Palliative Care Innovation. I helped to document the current state of health care in New York State to demonstrate the value of the enhanced assisted living residence model. The most significant piece of this project has been establishing the cost of care for older adults in the last year of life. In documenting the cost of each medical care step for several pathways, my analysis has clearly shown that the model that HCC plans to employ is a far more cost-effective model than others that currently exist in New York State.

This analysis has been a powerful tool to convey to policymakers that better and less expensive models for health care exist for people with life-limiting illnesses.

This fellowship has helped me understand more deeply the importance of religion and spirituality to health and well-being. In particular, I’m grateful to those professional chaplains who allowed me to shadow them and who took time to discuss with me what they do and how they do it. It’s been eye-opening to see first-hand the profound impact a chaplain’s visit can have on both patients and families.

Seeing these interactions in the context of other health care providers has also showed me the ways in which chaplains can help create a fuller picture of a patient, augmenting the medical team’s overall ability to provide appropriate and culturally sensitive care.

Finally, I’ve come to better understand the ways in which many in the medical community fail truly to acknowledge patients and their families as spiritual beings and, as a result, as human beings.

Follow us and join the conversations on spirit –centered palliative care.