The Medical Student and the Chaplain: Journeys in the Halls of the Hospital
Linda Golding, MA, BCC, Staff Chaplain, Coordinator of Pastoral Services Milstein Hospital, New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Spirituality is a topic of growing interest in the medical field. Medical students are exposed to lectures and readings designed to introduce them to existential concerns of patients, families and care providers each of whom is living with or surrounded by illness. There are wellness programs for medical students and residents to teach aspects of self-care. However, traditional first-year introduction to clinical skills classes struggle to integrate these elements of clinical training within their students’ early clinical experiences.
Clinical Pastoral Education offers chaplain students an experiential style of learning about hope, meaning and connection and how it changes as illness changes and as death approaches. It also offers a systematic and generalizable method of teaching self-care, self-awareness, and boundary maintenance in the hospital setting.
The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons began in the fall of 2014 to use chaplains as clinical mentors for medical students and to expose students to some of the pedagogical methodologies of Clinical Pastoral Education. All first year medical students are required to fulfill one seven week clinical clerkship as part of the Foundations of Clinical Medicine course. Traditionally these clerkships involve students assigned at random to work with care providers in the hospital or clinic setting – Nurses, Surgeons, Physicians, Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Social Workers. The pedagogical agenda in these placements is centered around clinical communication skills. In the Fall of 2014, the Foundations Directors added Chaplains to the list of clerkship preceptors and three students were assigned to each of the seven week sessions. The students participated with Staff Chaplains on visits to both adult and pediatric patients and families on in- and out-patient units, intensive care units and emergency rooms. In the Fall of 2015, another six students were assigned to clerkships with Pastoral Care.
This workshop will present the methodology developed for introducing medical students to the discipline and practice of hospital based pastoral care, the questionnaires and short essays completed by the students both before and after the clerkships, and the structure and content of clinical debriefings after each visit and weekly process groups. The clerkship syllabus will be presented, and participants will be invited to use it as a starting point to elaborate their own ideas about integrating spirituality and pastoral training into their own institutional clinical training curriculum.
Spirituality is a topic of growing interest in the medical field. Medical students are exposed to lectures and readings designed to introduce them to existential concerns of patients, families and care providers each of whom is living with or surrounded by illness. There are wellness programs for medical students and residents to teach aspects of self-care. However, traditional first-year introduction to clinical skills classes struggle to integrate these elements of clinical training within their students’ early clinical experiences.
Clinical Pastoral Education offers chaplain students an experiential style of learning about hope, meaning and connection and how it changes as illness changes and as death approaches. It also offers a systematic and generalizable method of teaching self-care, self-awareness, and boundary maintenance in the hospital setting.
The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons began in the fall of 2014 to use chaplains as clinical mentors for medical students and to expose students to some of the pedagogical methodologies of Clinical Pastoral Education. All first year medical students are required to fulfill one seven week clinical clerkship as part of the Foundations of Clinical Medicine course. Traditionally these clerkships involve students assigned at random to work with care providers in the hospital or clinic setting – Nurses, Surgeons, Physicians, Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Social Workers. The pedagogical agenda in these placements is centered around clinical communication skills. In the Fall of 2014, the Foundations Directors added Chaplains to the list of clerkship preceptors and three students were assigned to each of the seven week sessions. The students participated with Staff Chaplains on visits to both adult and pediatric patients and families on in- and out-patient units, intensive care units and emergency rooms. In the Fall of 2015, another six students were assigned to clerkships with Pastoral Care.
This workshop will present the methodology developed for introducing medical students to the discipline and practice of hospital based pastoral care, the questionnaires and short essays completed by the students both before and after the clerkships, and the structure and content of clinical debriefings after each visit and weekly process groups. The clerkship syllabus will be presented, and participants will be invited to use it as a starting point to elaborate their own ideas about integrating spirituality and pastoral training into their own institutional clinical training curriculum.