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The HMNT Update

Westburg Institute for Faith Community Nursing

Dear friend,

 

The Spiritual Care Association (SCA) is proud to partner with the Westberg Institute for Faith Community Nursing to pursue our common goal of compassionate, whole-person care of body, mind, and spirit. We are excited to work with Westberg [r20.rs6.net]’s extraordinary network of organizations and nurse professionals – across the country and around the world – to continue growing the calling of faith community nursing and further establishing spiritual care as integral to the nursing profession.

 

SCA’s broad mission is to help build and support a well-trained workforce of many disciplines to care for the human spirit wherever health care is provided, including in the homes and other community settings where faith community nurses reach vulnerable congregants and neighbors. SCA, in turn, is buoyed by the depth of resources of our close affiliate, HealthCare Chaplaincy Network (HCCN), which has 60+ years’ experience helping people faced with illness and suffering find comfort and meaning. HCCN’s mission for decades has included person-to-person care, research, and education on best spiritual care practices. 

 

We invite you to visit our websites: www.spiritualcareassocation.org [r20.rs6.net] and www.healthcarechaplaincy.org [r20.rs6.net] – that offer courses, webinars, and written resources on various aspects of spiritual care. Materials specific to the nursing profession includes courses and webinars on faith community nursing, teacher training, and management and leadership skills. Here are two foundational papers I think you will find very helpful:

SPIRITUAL CARE: What It Means and Why It Matters in Health Care
Spiritual Care and Nursing: A Nurse’s Contribution and Practice

 

We look forward to our work with the Westberg Institute to advance faith community nursing and enrich the entire nursing field. Together we will bring greater understanding of spiritual care and its place in the provision of patient- and family-engaged care for all. 

 

Sincerely,

 

Rev. Eric J. Hall, DTh, APBCC

President and CEO

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CLERGY and CASA Programs

From Wedding Rings to Nose Rings, Generational Differences in the Pews
By Faith Roberts, MSN, RN, NEA-BC
Sponsored by the Lutheran Faith Community Nurse Association

Have you been wondering why some churches elect to rent a high school gym or area hotel for worship? Or why the front of the worship space is an electronic haven? For some, church attendance is a given for others it is "nice if you can make it". At the time of this presentation worship is being done with up to SIX generations attending/ watching/listening. The world we live in changes continually as has attendance patterns and financial support of places of worship. Understanding what defines each generation helps the practicing Faith Community Nurse (FCN) to support programming and services that speak to different age groups.

Faith Roberts holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing and a Masters of Science Degree in Nursing-Health Care and Nursing Administration. She served as the Director of the Community Parish Nurse Program for Carle in Urbana IL from 1997-2021. During that time, she taught the FCN preparation course to 500 plus nurses representing over 220 congregations. Concurrently she held other positions at Carle and served as the Executive Director of Magnet, Pathway, Professional Practice and Faith Community Nursing. Faith is well known to the FCN community. Her gift of storytelling captivates her audience to both the drama and humor found in nursing practice.

OBJECTIVES Participants will:

1. Define date spans of each generation presently in your congregation

2. Explore the styles of worship associated with traditional and contemporary faith groups

3. Discuss the impact of Covid on attendance, types of services offered by places of worship

While the primary audience for this event is Faith Community Nurses, nurses who are not members of LFCNA, and non-nurses are welcome to attend. See the registration link below.

DATE: October 10, 2023 TIME: 3-5 pm AKT, 4-6 pm PT, 5-7 pm MT, 6-8 pm CT, 7-9 pm ET Registration fee: $30 for LFCNA members/ $50 for non-members Nursing Contact hours provided: 2.0 (see below) TO

REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT PLEASE FOLLOW THIS LINK: https://lutheranfcna.org/event-5408822
 

This activity has been submitted to Montana Nurses Association for approval to award contact hours. Montana Nurses Association is accredited with distinction as an approver of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. To receive contact hours for this event, attendees must attend the entire event and submit a completed evaluation form.

DFW FCN Course

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September 2023

The annual HHSC Innovators in Aging awards are open for nominations through November 17th!

The US Census Bureau reported that in 2022, Texas had over 30 million residents and estimates that by 2030 more than 20 percent of Texas’s population will be 60 years of age and older. Aging innovations is important for supporting aging and living well in Texas. In 2019, Texas HHSC launched the Innovators in Aging awards to highlight the inventive ways individuals, groups, programs, communities and new technologies are serving older adults, improving quality of life and promoting healthy aging.

Visit the Innovators in Aging web page [hhs.texas.gov] to learn how to nominate an innovator in one or more of the three award categories: Be Healthy, Be Connected and Be Informed. The web page also provides award category descriptions, a link to the online nomination system and a link to all previous award winners.

Please share this information with your contacts to promote the awards and encourage nominations of individuals, groups, programs, communities and new technologies serving older Texans.

For more information, contact Camden Frost at Camden.Frost@hhs.texas.gov.

Summer 2023

FAITH COMMUNITY NURSE (FCN) ANNUAL SAVE-THE-DATES 2023

Both In-House and Virtual-Live Webinar

June 2, 2023 - FCN Connection: In-House, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
 

 

June 23, 2023 - FCN Virtual-Live Webinar 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Dr. Stinson: Drug Awareness on the Dangers of Fentanyl!

2 Contact Hours

 


July 21-23 & 28-29, 2023 -Foundation Course for Faith Community Nurses:

In-House

 


August 25, 2023 - FCN Virtual-Live Webinar 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Dr. Elizabeth Long: What Matters to Older Adults

1.5 Contact Hours

 


September 29, 2023 - FCN Virtual-Live Webinar

Dr. Sharon Hinton: Overcoming Fear and Anxiety After COVID

1.5 Contact Hours

 


October 27, 2023 - FCN Fall Virtual-Live Conference 2023

Gay-Lynne Jones, RN: The Importance of Early Detection & Screening Guidelines for Cancer

2 Contact Hours

​

Dr. Sharon Hinton: Cultivating Happiness in a Crisis Filled World

TBD Contact Hours

 


December 1, 2023 – FCN Holiday Open House: In-House, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm


If you are not on the FCN Webinar Master List receiving the Registration Request, please email, Rebekah.seymour@bhset.net

Update Winter 2022

Patient and Nurse

Texas Health Ministries Network January Meeting

The THMN May 26, 2022 @11 a.m. meeting will be conducted virtually.

THMN members will receive a May virtual business meeting announcement by email. Meeting is hosted by Catalina Schulze-Kraft, Methodist Healthcare Ministries of San Antonio. Health Equity is the education topic with CE’s offered. To join the THMN see the membership application form on the last page of this newsletter. If you need help with the cost, contact rita.carlson@dshs.texas.gov.

Below is the website via gratis by the *Texas Department State Health Services (DSHS) that relates to health ministry. Rita Carlson updates the calendar on a regular basis. Scroll past the calendar to see the THMN listings. Please visit this site and let Rita know what you like, dislike or want added. https://www.dshs.texas.gov/library/nursing.shtm

THMN is developing its own website. Stay tuned

Words of Encouragement

Words of Encouragement- Hand of God. By Andrea C. Davis. Contributing writer 

 

The hand represents divine approval, and specifically acceptance of his sacrifice! Will you hold on to his unchanging hand! 

 

Psalm 8:3

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

 

Psalm 138:8

The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;

Your lovingkindness, O Lord, is everlasting;

Do not forsake the works of Your hands.

 

Isaiah 64:8

But now, O Lord, You are our Father,

We are the clay, and You our potter;

And all of us are the work of Your hand

 

Isaiah 41:19-20

I will put the cedar in the wilderness,

The acacia and the myrtle and the olive tree;

I will place the juniper in the desert

Together with the box tree and the cypress,

That they may see and recognize,

And consider and gain insight as well,

That the hand of the Lord has done this,

And the Holy One of Israel has created it.

 

Thank you!

Andrea Davis 

Nursing 101: Listen to the Patient

Submitted by Linda Schoene, RN, MSN

On a recent Sunday a physician was jogging on the track across from our church when he noticed a woman in distress. He assisted her across the street to the door of the church where she needed significant help getting into the narthex. The temperature that day was warm. I noted that she was heavily dressed and her jacket felt damp. It was apparent she had been walking for a significant period of time.

She had no ID with her, but was able to state her name and that she had to get to the veterinarian’s office because he had to put her horse down. Further conversation yielded no more information and it became clear that she most likely had some dementia.

Several members of the church made phone calls to Adult Protective Services, SEARCH Homeless Services and 911. I knew the woman herself was the only one who could help us find her way to home and family. Nursing education taught me to always listen to the patient. I pursued the need to go the vet’s office which was indeed an upsetting subject that brought tears, but it also brought forth the name of the vet. I took a shot a did a Google search. One name popped up, but it was a vet in LaGrange. LaGrange and horse made sense so I called. Even though it was a Sunday the vet quickly answered the phone. To make a long story short he knew the woman, where she lived and how to contact her family.

I soon received a call from her son who said a family member would come to get her. Turns out she eloped from a nearby memory care unit. 911 arrived and talked with the woman who declined to go to the ER, but I was able to assure EMS that family was coming.

Very soon a family member arrived along with staff from the care facility. Together we helped our mystery guest into the car and she was on her way home. The whole process took less than an hour. Some may wonder how all of this came together, but I have no wonder at all. God’s hand was present in all of it. It started with a physician who recognized something wasn’t right. Otherwise, she may not have gotten attention until she passed out or fell down. Google was efficient and the vet was responsive as was her family. But most of all the woman herself was able to help us even in he dementia because of the love for a horse. The patient is always the key.

Newsletter May 2022

Social Distance

Texas Health Ministries Network Meeting
 

The fall virtual meeting will be September 30th with the Texas Health Resources hosting.


The THMN May 26, 2022 @11 a.m. meeting was conducted virtually with the meeting hosted by Catalina Schulze-Kraft, Methodist Healthcare Ministries of San Antonio. Health Equity was the education topic with CE’s offered.

Join the HIV Challenge Informational Webinar!

The HHS Office of Minority Health (OMH) and Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP) will host a webinar to review the details of the new HIV Challenge, a national competition to identify innovative and effective approaches to enhance community engagement and mobilization on the reduction of HIV stigma disparities. This webinar will provide an overview of the challenge, judging and eligibility criteria, the challenge's timeline, and how to apply.

August 19, 3:00 p.m. ET.

2023 Westberg Symposium

Plan now to attend the 2023 Westberg Symposium at the Caring for the Human Spirit® Conference live in St. Louis, MO. The dates are April 17 - 19, 2023.

We are planning a celebration; think of it as a long overdue FCN family reunion along with many other activities for nurses and chaplains from various practice areas. Start planning now to bring your colleagues, networks, students and graduates so that those you interact with can share the experience. Send your suggestions for speakers and activities to admin@westberginstitute.org and watch for announcements in the coming weeks as the call for workshops and volunteers opens.

Word of Encouragement
mid-year Revival. By Andrea Davis.

Revival is real and revival is the heart of the Lord for His people. As followers and children of God, it is our delight to invite His Holy Spirit to breathe life back into this parched world. We can stand confident that He hears our prayers, and that they are precious to Him. (Crosswalk, 2019).

Jeremiah 30:17 For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal,” declares the Lord, “because they have called you an outcast: ‘It is Zion, for whom no one cares!’
Psalm 85:6 Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?
Psalm 80:19 Restore us, O Lord God of hosts! Let your face shine, that we may be saved!

 

We Celebrate Linda Schoene’s 50 years in nursing and
21 years as our congregational nurse

Reprinted per permission from The King’s Banner newsletter, Christ the King Lutheran Church

Linda Schoene wanted to be a nurse for as long as she can remember! She outlined her career plans in an essay in 8th grade but, growing up in the 1960’s, she didn’t always receive the encouragement she deserved. A guidance counselor told her she was too smart to be a nurse, and a youth advisor (a physician) recommended that she attend a hospital-based school for nursing: if she went through a degree program she would be a smarter—but not a better-- nurse. At the same time, while a junior in high school, Linda’s mother became seriously ill, and Linda cared for her until her death that summer. Nevertheless, in 1968 after graduating from high school in Lyons, NY (population 5000), Linda attended SUNY Brockport and earned her BS in nursing four years later. After graduation Linda and a roommate moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Jim Schoene, whom Linda had met on Spring Break in Daytona Beach a few years earlier, was an engineering student. They married in 1973, and she worked in obstetrics at the UofM Hospital until Jim graduated in 1974. He was offered a job with MW Kellogg in Houston; they lived here for a short time, and then they were off to southern Maryland. Jim and Linda became parents to one boy and two girls— and Linda worked part-time work along the way, volunteering with the Red Cross, teaching childbirth classes, and working with the Bloodmobile. In 1988, in Shreveport, La., she resumed working in a hospital setting. It was here that Linda’s journey as a Lutheran began– when she visited Holy Trinity Lutheran in 1986 and then joined after falling in love with the liturgy. She taught first communion classes there, and, interestingly, one of her students was Evan McClanahan, now a pastor at First Evangelical Houston. The family moved to Houston (again) in 1999, never dreaming that it would be their last move! When Jim retired in 2016, they had crisscrossed the country, moving 13 different times in 42 years—and Linda had been licensed as a nurse in 9 different states. After the move to Houston in 1999 Linda would drive past Christ the King Church every day on her way to work at the Women’s Hospital and soon joined our congregation. In January 2001, the church council under the leadership of Pastor Moore, committed to “explore the possibilities for Parish Nurse Ministry” as one of the congregation’s missional emphases, and before year’s end had decided to add the position of a nurse to the church staff. At the same time Pastor Beth Warpmaeker and Pastor Fred Haman, working to build on our Congregational Care Team and to formalize a health ministry, asked Linda if she would like to be the congregational nurse. There was no job description, and no one was exactly sure what this new position would entail; nevertheless, she agreed and was commissioned as our congregational nurse in December 2001. Now, 20 years later, the work she began has become an integral part of our congregational life. Her focus in the early years of this ministry was the education of herself as well as the congregation about this new concept— through Banner articles, blood pressure screenings, home visits, and educational workshops. Courses in basic preparation for faith community nursing (Incarnate Word, San Antonio, in 2003) and in Lay Chaplaincy through an introduction to the Community of Hope helped her define her role, reach out to members, and build trust in our community. Karen Hahn from the Institute of Spirituality and Health along with Helen Appleberg, founder of Community of Hope, provided much guidance as the health ministry developed here at CTK. Together with the Congregational Care Team that ministry grew as member needs and member gifts were paired. Linda understands that the prime role of a congregational nurse is advocating for the patient as well as educating the family and their caregivers when there are healthrelated needs. She helps people understand what to expect during a hospital stay, and she stays in touch with them when they go home. Sometimes members request assistance with follow-up appointments as well as with meds issues, and others utilize her expertise while identifying and visiting rehab facilities. She has arranged CPR classes for the congregation and has established an emergency plan for incidents at the church; ushers have instructions to follow and there are yellow vests for responders to wear. Our LEM - Lay Eucharistic Ministry-program has been an important part of her ministry and she will continue as LEM coordinator. Linda believes that now is the right time to retire. Her nurse’s license expires June 30, and that will be her last day as our congregational nurse. Her husband is retired. Her son and two grandson live in Houston; her daughters and one grandson live in Portland, OR. There are many youth baseball games and much travel in their future! Nevertheless, Linda wants members to feel free to call her if they need help during this period of transition. Linda would also like all of us to know “what a blessing it has been to be able to connect my faith to the profession and calling that I love and to work in the context of a caring faith community!”

 

Prison Ministry

Federal Prison Camp. Bryan, Texas (Note: Anne Kuempel a charter member of THMN. Her story is printed by permission)

 

Reaching Beyond Prison walls: Stories of Volunteer Visitors and the Prisoners They See By Eric Corson, Available in Paperback Barnes and Noble

My name is Anne Kuempel and I have been a visitor for 15 years at FTC Bryan, Texas. I became a visitor after learning from friends about their visiting FTC Bastrop, which is a men’s prison near Austin. I asked if there were visitors at the women’s prison in Bryan and learned there were none. I asked three other friends if they would consider visiting at Bryan and they said, “yes”. So, I contacted PVS and two of them were approved to visit.


So, on April 16, 2005, I began visiting a FPC Bryan. Once a month, usually on Saturday, I leave Austin and drive two hours to Bryan to see women there, many who have no other visitor except me. One time, I say a young woman who had been incarcerated ten years and never had a visit. She was so eager to meet with me, saying, “Yesterday, was telling everyone, I’m going to have a visit tomorrow!”

 

Many of the women I see, usually four each visit, usually have not seen a familiar face, family, or friend because they are too far away for them to receive a visit. During the remainder of their prison time, I will become that familiar face. The women are very appreciative and I feel the friendship we share is a mutual blessing for them and for me.

 

Some prisoners ask me, “Why do you do this?” I try to let them know I do it because they are important to me and when they leave Bryan and close this chapter of their lives they will see lots of people like me in the outside world I am their friend when they are in prison and they can share with me any confidence they have. Needless to say, many of them are others and desperately miss their children. Because I am older than most of the women I visit, they seem to share whatever is on their minds, thinking I will understand – which I do.


Before each visit, as we were instructed to do, we send postcards to the prisoners and a letter to the prison to let them know who we would visit ad the date. For eight years, we never heard back from the prison, but we went and were always allowed in, without any problem. However, one day when we arrived we were told that we would not be allowed in. There was a new officer at the entry and after telling him that we had been coming for years and hadn’t had a problem before he flatly refused to let us visit. He even contracted his supervisor and still no luck.


Since it was 110 miles from our home to the prison, we really didn’t want to go home without seeing the prisoners who were expecting us. Eric always told us to carry his cell phone number with us, so I dialed Eric and he immediately answered. Eric talked with the officer and he agreed to let us visit. We continued to visit for many more years. I still send cards to the prisoners and a letter to the prison and still never hear back, but that is okay because I have never had another entry problem.


It is amazing that we have a resource office in Philadelphia and visitors all over the U. S. can make visits like I do and feel support as we go about fulfilling the mission of PVS.

 

Shurley Sue Tucker Robinson Obituary

The first Treasurer of THMN and assisted in starting an adult day care.

Shurley Sue Tucker Robinson, age 81, was born on December 12, 1940, in Atlanta, Georgia, and went to be with our Lord on February 16, 2022. Shurley loved helping people and taking care of others so much that she chose that as a profession; she was a Registered Nurse for 43 years. Shurley graduated from the Brackenridge Hospital School of Nursing in 1962. Shurley worked for 18 years as a Cardiac Intensive Care Nurse at Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas. The accomplishment she is most proud of is being part of the medical team that performed the first heart transplant in the region in 1986.

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