Celebrating VITAS’ Commitment to Clinical Pastoral Education
Nationally Accredited Pastoral Training Offers Profound Opportunities
for Personal Growth
An Invitation from Tim O’Toole, Chief Executive Officer, VITAS Innovative Hospice Care®
Each October, hospitals, hospices, nursing homes and other healthcare providers commemorate Pastoral Care Week. And while this celebration is always important at VITAS, where we have at least one chaplain working on every one of our interdisciplinary teams, it was a little more noteworthy for VITAS in 2007.
That’s because 2007 marked the five-year anniversary of VITAS joining the ranks of some of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals and health systems in offering accredited clinical pastoral education to divinity students working toward their degree, as well as working clergy and interested laypeople who want to enhance their ability to provide spiritual care to those with a life-limiting diagnosis.
At the time VITAS was certified by the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, Inc. (ACPE), there were only a few hospices doing this work. VITAS was and still is the only hospice certified as a system to do clinical pastoral education.
As of mid-2007, we have eight ACPE-certified VITAS sites supporting CPE activities at more than half of our VITAS programs—from some of our largest to some of our newest!
As a result of VITAS’ national size and reach, we provide much more CPE training than any other hospice organization—and we rank with some of the nation’s largest health system-based CPE providers in terms of the volume of training we provide, according to ACPE. In just our first five years, more than 400 spiritual care professionals have received CPE training from VITAS, including 119 in 2006 alone.
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From our founding, VITAS has been a national leader in defining the spiritual component of hospice care. Our commitment to clinical pastoral education reinforces our commitment to advance hospice care in the United States by advocating at all levels for greater awareness and utilization of hospice.
None of this groundbreaking work would be possible without the support of our program leadership and the good work of our CPE supervisors.
Thanks to the work we do in CPE, VITAS is raising the bar across hospices in America in terms of the professionalization of those providing spiritual care to terminally ill patients and their family members who follow every faith and belief system.
I invite you to download a copy of our report, A National Commitment to ACPE Training/Nationally Accredited Pastoral Training Offers Profound Opportunities for Personal Growth. In it, you’ll learn more about the integral role that spiritual care plays in the hospice environment; you’ll read fascinating stories of individual journeys through faith and end-of-life care; you’ll see how VITAS’ growing commitment to Clinical Pastoral Education ensures that our hospice programs meet the diverse needs of the growing communities we’re privileged to serve.
Sincerely,
Tim O’Toole
Chief Executive Officer
VITAS Innovative Hospice Care®
For broadband users: Click here to download the entire report (~ 5Mb)For dial-up users, you can download the report in two parts: Click here to download Part 1 (2.7Mb)
Or click on any of the links below to go directly to specific sections of A National Commitment to ACPE Training/Nationally: |