Date
of Last Review 3/30/07
SME: Chaplain
The chaplain visits the patient to deliver pastoral services and to assure patient
rights to religious expression. Chaplain visits may occur by consult request
from the treatment team, by request from patients, their families or through
spirituality groups and chapel services.
Members of the treatment team may request a pastoral care consult for a specific reason such as the following:
 | Counseling to help the patient deal with a spiritual/religious problem, see Pastoral Care Consult (form is available for data entry in Sunrise) |
| Assessing the patient's treatment needs in light of the patient's cultural/spiritual/religious baseline, see Consult for Religiosity (form is available for data entry in Sunrise) |
| Providing supportive counseling |
| Helping the patient relate to a religious support community |
| Providing the patient with religious material |
| Providing a sacrament or contacting a pastor of the patient's faith to provide sacramental ministry |
The treatment team, family, or patient can request consults through the Allegra system with a specific reason for the request. Chaplains will respond to consult requests within 48 hours of receipt.
The chaplain does the following when consulting a patient:
Stage |
Description |
1 |
Interviews the patient and determines the cultural/spiritual/religious history |
2 |
Determines the patient's present cultural/spiritual/religious beliefs and practices |
3 |
Notes differences between past and present cultural/spiritual/religious beliefs and practices and clinically judges the patient's strengths and weaknesses |
4 |
Suggests methods to increase the patient's strengths and decrease the weaknesses |
5 |
Documents the assessments, treatment suggestions, and visits in the progress notes |
Chaplains visit patients at-large as time permits. Spiritual groups facilitate patient understanding of the benefits that spiritual self-assessment and spiritual coping skills offer for healing and mental health. The groups are age-appropriate and diagnosis-appropriate.
The Chaplain offers worship services for the entire center on Sunday and on religious holidays.
Related to regulatory standards
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