Chaplaincy Innovation Lab

Join four chaplains of color and panelist-authors who have contributed to a special issue of the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy on the history, experiences, and future of chaplains of color. You can find the full issue here.

We’re joined by:

Rev. Marilyn Barnes is Rev. Robert B. Lantz Chair of Patient Counseling at VCU College of Health Professions and Director of Pastoral Care at VCU Medical Center.

Calvin Bradley, Jr is Assistant Professor of Patient Counseling at VCU College of Health Professions.

Rev. Lex Cade-White is Ethics and Mission and Spiritual Care Health Equity Manager at Advocate Aurora Health.

Dr. Jaclyn Williams is Assistant Professor of the Practice of Preaching and Chaplaincy at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Join contributors to Workplace Wellness: From Resiliency to Suicide Prevention and Grief Management: A Practical Guide to Supporting Healthcare Professionals (Springer International, 2023) for a discussion of this recent, vital publication. The Lab community can order at a 20% discount using the code found in this PDF.

Participants will learn about the particular workplace needs of healthcare professionals as well as current research on how spiritual care providers can support those professionals.

From the publisher:

This book uniquely provides actionable strategies along the wellness continuum in multiple dimensions: personal, institutional and professional; while applicable across disciplines: nursing and allied health, advanced practice providers and physicians. Further, the content is presented in a manner that can be taught to those entering the workforce, or serve as a primer for Wellness Officers. Most mental health texts focus on the needs of patients and ignore the mental health needs of clinicians. This book fills that gap embracing wellness initiatives as a matter of mental health. Wellness strategies for Inclusion Diversity and Equity are presented. The often ignored subject of suicide is approached head-on with evidence-based strategies for prevention. At the far end of the continuum of wellness, grief management after losing a colleague to death and/or suicide will be addressed. Each chapter includes learning objectives, a brief presentation of the science, application of principles into wellness practice, opportunities for future research and discussion questions. Artwork created by healthcare workers are included to augment transfer of knowledge through art as a way of knowing. Videos are offered to demonstrate through simulation lessons taught through the book.

We’re joined by:

Allison Kestenbaum is Supervisor of Spiritual Care and CPE at UC San Diego Health.

Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk is Vice President for Health Promotion and Chief Wellness Officer at The Ohio State University.

Maggie Mortali is Vice President of Programs and Workplace Initiatives at American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Amanda Choflet is Interim Dean of the School of Nursing and Associate Clinical Professor at Northeastern University Bouvé College of Health Sciences.

Clare Dickens MBE is Academic Lead, Mental Health and Well-being, University of Wolverhampton.

Join Rev. Sarah Bowen, Animal Chaplain and Program Director of Compassion Consortium’s Animal Chaplaincy Training Program, as well as Rev. Ginny Mikita and Susan Shannon for a conversation on how chaplains can help individuals and communities experience and process the animal and habitat loss.

We’ll discuss practical methods of supporting those experiencing anticipatory grief, animal death, humans moving into settings that do not accommodate animals, and more.

We thank Compassion Consortium for their support of this webinar. We are joined by:

Reverend Sarah Bowen, MA, Alt Div is an ordained interfaith/interspiritual minister, animal chaplain, and program director of Compassion Consortium’s Animal Chaplaincy Training Program.

Rev. Ginny K. Mikita, JD is a certified Animal-Friendly Attorney and ordained interfaith minister/animal chaplain.

Susan Shannon, MDiv, BCC is a seeker, teacher, earth and animal steward, devotee of the heart.

We thank Compassion Consortium for their support of this webinar. Learn more at CompassionConsortium.org.

Animal Chaplaincy Training from Compassion Consortium: 

More tips on meaningful rituals for animal and habitat loss, we suggest:

Compassion Consortium is a non-sectarian center. We offer well-being resources, spiritual guidance, support, and community fellowship to all humans who care about and advocate for animals and the planet. Learn more at compassionconsortium.org

Join the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab for a conversation with Timothy O. Benedict, author of Spiritual Ends: Religion and the Heart of Dying in Japan and Assistant Professor in the School of Sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan.

From the publisher, University of California Press:

What role does religion play at the end of life in Japan? Spiritual Ends draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with hospice patients, chaplains, and medical workers to provide an intimate portrayal of how spiritual care is provided to the dying in Japan. Timothy O. Benedict uses both local and cross-cultural perspectives to show how hospice caregivers in Japan are appropriating and reinterpreting global ideas about spirituality and the practice of spiritual care. Benedict relates these findings to a longer story of how Japanese religious groups have pursued vocational roles in medical institutions as a means to demonstrate a so-called “healthy” role in society. By paying attention to how care for the kokoro (heart or mind) is key to the practice of spiritual care, this book enriches conventional understandings of religious identity in Japan while offering a valuable East Asian perspective to global conversations on the ways religion, spirituality, and medicine intersect at death.

This book is available as an open access eBook here.

We will be joined by:

Timothy Benedict is Associate Professor in the School of Sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. His education includes a PhD in Asian Religions from Princeton University and an MA in Asian Religions from Harvard University. He was also a Foreign Research Fellow at Kyoto University.

As a result of the 21st Century Cures Act, patients in the United States have greater and more immediate access to their care notes. What are open notes, and what is the role of the chaplain in this new paradigm?

As we noted in a 2021 webinar, “Healthcare systems are required to make a patient’s electronic medical record directly available via secure portal under the Cures Act. This direct access includes all documentation made by healthcare chaplains, including templates with pre-populated check boxes and narrative notes.”

How should chaplain notes be included in electronic health information? Join three leading chaplain researchers for a research-informed discussion of the Cures Act, open notes, and what chaplains need to know about how they can document encounters.

We are grateful to Transforming Chaplaincy for co-sponsoring this webinar.

We are joined by:

Jo Hirschmann, Senior Director of Education, Center for Spirituality and Health @Mount Sinai Health System

Csaba Szilagyi, Director, Transforming Chaplaincy

Paul Galchutt, Research Staff Chaplain, M Health Fairview

Join us for an intimate, exploratory conversation with Koshin Paley Ellison Sensei about his new book, Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion.

Use code UNTANGLEDCIL for 20% off hardcover orders at geni.us/paley-cil.

Untangled is a welcoming guidebook for finding expansive ease and deep compassion within oneself and through relationships with others based on the Eightfold Path, one of Buddhism’s foundational teachings. In his book, Koshin weaves together anecdotes from his own life dealing with abuse and discrimination, insights from many wise teachers, and invitations to constantly practice showing up to our lives in every moment.

Together, Zen teacher and monk, Jungian psychotherapist, and the co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, Koshin Paley Ellison, and educator, editor, and director of programs at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, Dr. Michael Skaggs, will discuss how this journey of untangling intra- and interpersonal suffering relates to the core aspirations and activities of those in caregiving partnerships. How might we walk the path of freedom in our everyday lives?

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT UNTANGLED
“Koshin is a visionary spiritual leader who brings together the medicine for fear – bridging the divide between our values and our actions. He gives us the soulful prescription and the companioning needed for integration of personal awareness, social healing, and global connectedness.”
-VAN JONES, Founder of Dream Corps

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we believe our own thoughts! Koshin Paley Ellison shares his wisdom and passion in Untangled. Written with truth, humor, sometimes revealing pain, and always manifesting compassion, Untangled is a gem.”
-SHARON SALZBERG, author of Lovingkindness and Real Change

We will be joined by:

Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, MFA, LMSW, DMIN, is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and ACPE Certified Chaplaincy Educator. After more than a decade as a chaplain and psychotherapist, Koshin co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. The non-profit center offers contemplative approaches to care through education, carepartnering, and Zen practice. Today, New York Zen Center’s methodologies are internationally recognized—and have touched the lives of tens of thousands of individuals.

What is the relationship between congregational service and chaplaincy? No few chaplains also work in congregational service, or other settings of shared and intentional religious, spiritual, or philosophy. How can both types of work be successful? How does one inform the other?

In this webinar, participants will gain a better understanding of the skills and abilities that carry over from congregational service into non-congregational spiritual care, and vice versa. We will also make explicit those aspects of non-congregational care that are unique to chaplaincy. Multiple examples of successful careers in spiritual care pursued while also providing congregational service will be provided, and participants who serve congregations will gain actionable advice on pursuing work in chaplaincy. We will be joined by:

Wendy Cadge, Director of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab

Tim Shapiro, President of the Indianapolis Center for Congregations

Those wishing to make a public comment on “Medicaid Program; Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Managed Care Access, Finance, and Quality,” a proposed rule by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, may do so here.

Dr. Heaphy’s slides are available here.

This webinar will discuss the work of Dennis Heaphy on spiritual care in healthcare settings for individuals who are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare coverage. It emphasizes the importance of coding chaplaincy services for these populations, particularly those enrolled in capitated care plans.

Adapted from Heaphy’s recent article in Health Affairs: Spiritual services are an oft neglected but important part of comprehensive care. While CMS and its Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (the Innovation Center) have taken significant steps in the right direction, CMS could require providers in the Fully Integrated Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans (FIDE SNPs) and Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) to provide enrollees with spiritual assessments and spiritual care as optional services. We are joined by:

Dennis Heaphy, DMin, MPG, MDiv, MEd joined the Disability Policy Consortium (DPC) in 2008. He engages in Community-Based Participatory Action Research and is also a policy analyst. He promotes legislation and policies at the state and federal level that positively impact social determinants of health. These and other barriers lead to inequities in healthcare access and outcomes for people with disabilities and ethnic and minority populations. Mr. Heaphy is active with the Massachusetts Public Health Association and Health Care for All, developing strategies to increase the utilization of public-health principles in the development, implementation and evaluation of healthcare policies. He is also active in a number of policy initiatives at the national level that increase the voices of persons most impacted by negative social determinants of health and gaps in access to home and community-based services. Mr. Heaphy is also interested in the role of spirituality and spiritual care in improving wellness and health outcomes for persons with disabilities.

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We thank our sponsor for this webinar, Interfaith America. Learn more at InterfaithAmerica.org.

Please note that this webinar was presented from a chaplain working in the Christian tradition, with commentary and potential interventions that assume a Christian population being provided spiritual care. The Chaplaincy Innovation Lab stands firmly on its principles — including All Are Welcome and We Respect Differences — and so we encourage viewers to consider how they might adapt Christian-specific approaches from this webinar for a variety of contexts which are non-Christian, non-spiritual, non-religious. We also acknowledge that the video clip towards the end, arguing for the necessity of Christian belief for personal worth, would not be appropriate outside of very specific contexts in which the chaplain and the person being served have the same, pre-discussed theological beliefs.

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This webinar will educate, empower and equip chaplains to provide spiritual care to people with disabilities (PWD) without inherent bias.

First, our guest, Rev. Dr. Jackee Jackson, will discuss how chaplains can acquire effective language to communicate with people with disabilities by using person and identity first language. In addition, chaplains will learn about what Rev. Dr. Jackson calls the “Ten Commandments of Disability and Sensitivity.”

Second, this webinar will help chaplains become empowered and see themselves akin to midwives in this area of spiritual care, offering their skilled, compassionate and supportive presence to PWD and their families.

Third, by equipping chaplains with language that removes attitudinal barriers that exist in society, the webinar will help transform the ways in which chaplains interact with PWD in their words and actions. Chaplains will learn the unique ways that language, communication and attitude matters when providing emotional and spiritual care to people with disabilities. We will be joined by:

Rev. Dr. Jackee Jackson, Chaplain, JFK Medical Center, Edison, NJ

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Rev. Dr. Jackson has provided three resources that may be useful for chaplains serving people with disabilities:

Jackee Jackson, “Identity First Language”

Jackee Jackson, “The ‘Ten Commandments‘ of Etiquette for Communicating with People with Disabilities”

Kathie Snow, “A Few Words about People First Language“

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We thank Interfaith America for their support for this webinar. Learn more at InterfaithAmerica.org.

Join Chenxing Han, author of Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (North Atlantic Books, 2021), for a discussion of her new book One Long Listening: A Memoir of Grief, Friendship, and Spiritual Care.

From Penguin Random House:
How do we grieve our losses? How can we care for our spirits? one long listening offers enduring companionship to all who ask these searing, timeless questions.

Immigrant daughter, novice chaplain, bereaved friend: author Chenxing Han (Be the Refuge) takes us on a pilgrimage through the wilds of grief and laughter, pain and impermanence, reconnecting us to both the heartache and inexplicable brightness of being human. Eddying around three autumns of Han’s life, one long listening journeys from a mountaintop monastery in Taiwan to West Coast oncology wards, from oceanside Ireland to riverfront Phnom Penh. Through letters to a dying friend, bedside chaplaincy visits, and memories of a migratory childhood, Han’s startling, searching memoir cuts a singular portrait of a spiritual caregiver in training. Just as we touch the depths, bracing for resolution, Han’s swift, multilingual prose sweeps us back to unknowingness: 不知最親切. Not knowing is most intimate. Chinese mothers, hillside graves. A dreamed olive tree, a lost Siberian crane. The music of scripts and silence. These shards–bright, broken, giddy, aching–are mirrors to our own lives in joy and sorrow. A testament to enduring connection by a fresh and urgent new literary voice, one long listening asks fearlessly into the stories we inhabit, the hopes we relinquish, and what it means simply to be, to and for the ones we love.

Chenxing Han is the author of the widely reviewed Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists with North Atlantic Books. She is a regular contributor to Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and other publications, and a frequent speaker and workshop leader at schools, universities, and Buddhist communities across the nation. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Hemera Foundation, the Lenz Foundation, and elsewhere.

Chenxing holds a BA from Stanford University, an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Graduate Theological Union, and a certificate in Buddhist chaplaincy from the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California. She is a co-teacher of Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard at Phillips Academy Andover, and a co-organizer of May We Gather: A National Buddhist Memorial for Asian American Ancestors.