CPE in Alaska: An Overview

Edited from an on my experiences in CPE that was written for The Trumpet, the monthly newsletter of Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, Ga. (my sponsoring parish).

This summer, I am doing CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska. I chose to do CPE in Alaska because my husband lived here for nine years, but I had never been to Alaska. Spending a summer here would allow me to get to experience this area that was a big part of his life. It also helped that when I called last fall to inquire about CPE, I discovered that the program at Providence sounded like a really excellent program – and it is.

The CPE program here supports both residents and summer interns. There are five CPE residents who are here for at least one year each (two Catholic priests, a Baptist minister, a Methodist minister, a Disciples of Christ minister, and a Presbyterian lay person), and six of us summer interns.

The Spiritual Care staff at this Catholic hospital includes a Catholic priest, three Lutheran pastors (two ELCA, one Missouri Synod), a Methodist deacon, a Russian Orthodox priest, and a United Church of Christ minister. There is also a professional therapeutic musician on staff, who plays the harp for patients who are in pain or dying.

My CPE summer internship group includes four other seminary students (two Lutheran, one Methodist, one Presbyterian) and an Evangelical Free Church pastor who is considering making a career change from parish ministry to hospital chaplaincy and will continue after our summer unit to do a year-long residency. We are wonderfully diverse in our theologies and perspectives on life, and bring a rich variety of experiences to our group interactions. I believe I can speak for all my colleagues in saying that the experience has been a tremendous growing process for all of us.

Our CPE group and our supervisor, Fr. Al (far right).

Each of us summer interns is assigned to a particular floor that is our primary area of responsibility as a chaplain. I am on the first floor of the hospital, which is the maternity center: labor & delivery, prenatal care (for women with pregnancy complications), the mother-baby unit (post-delivery), and the newborn intensive care unit (NICU). I spend a lot of my days greeting new mothers in the Mother-Baby Unit and congratulating them on their new babies – a nice treat considering so many people are in hospitals for not-so-happy reasons! I also support families of babies in the NICU and women who may be stuck on our prenatal unit for months, every day another day closer to a viable baby who will be able to survive if born early.

In addition our floor duties, all the chaplains take turns carrying the spiritual care office’s main pager, where we get requests for chaplains and general pages about emergencies to the ER. I also work one overnight shift per week (Tuesday nights), when I am the only chaplain in the hospital from 8:45 p.m. to 7:15 a.m. and I must respond to any and all calls that come over the pager for a chaplain. So far, on my night shift I have done everything from sitting with a family after the death of their father to making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for a 6-year-old boy in the ER (I happened to have PB&J in my office since I eat it for lunch every day). You never know what you will be called to do as a chaplain!

Additionally, since this hospital is an explicitly faith-based organization, there are daily prayers over the loudspeaker at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Chaplains take turns saying these prayers, and I have used many prayers from the Book of Common Prayer’s Daily Office over the hospital’s loudspeaker this summer. There is also an ecumenical worship service on Sundays at 1 p.m. that the CPE interns take turns leading. I led a service in mid-July in which I used the New Zealand Prayer Book and music from Taize and the Iona Community to create an atmosphere of calm, centering meditation.

Overall, CPE has been a wonderful learning experience for me. I had been a bit wary of CPE since I generally get queasy and anxious in hospital settings, but I have been handling it much better than I thought I would. The experience has also helped me develop my prayer life, and I have begun to say the Daily Office more faithfully than I have in the past. I find that this practice has increased my sense of calm and inner peace, even in the midst of difficult situations.

I am learning new communication skills for supporting and being present to people and am working on “taking myself out of the picture,” so to speak, and focusing instead on the patient I am with and their words and feelings and thoughts, and opening myself to God’s direction. Although I certainly do not feel a call to hospital chaplaincy at this point (bloody trauma in the ER is still not my thing!), this experience has affirmed yet again my calling to parish ministry and has helped me to develop skills and confidence for that calling.

I feel an inner transformation taking place, slowly but surely, as I am being molded and “formed” into a priest. As I reflect on how much has changed for me in the past year since I started seminary, I feel much more confident that the entire formation process as a whole (discernment groups, seminary, CPE) will guide and mold me into the priest God is calling me to be by the time I graduate from Sewanee in 2012.