Responses to the January 2008 article "Pastoral care develops solutions to charting".

Thanks for the recent Vision article on charting. As was said, charting is an issue of concern these days, and many of us do it in many different ways. I found the article and the different examples helpful.

I am the director of mission and pastoral care in a long-term care facility. I am a Sister of Charity of Nazareth and we sponsor the ministry here at Nazareth Home, a 168-bed facility. Our pastoral care department started out rather homey, with our sisters the “pastoral care visitors.” We now have a renovated building with all private rooms, men and women residents and a dementia unit for women. The face of the Home has changed as well as the culture.

I have been here for three-plus years, and in those years we have looked at charting and designed/revised our own simple “spiritual assessment” which we use at our initial visit with residents. We chart only anointings in the residents’ charts. We keep regular, ongoing resident reviews in our own office computer.

In my experience with NACC and CHI and CHA, nursing homes/LTC are seldom mentioned when it comes to most healthcare issues, one being the charting of spiritual care. I also noticed that the NACC/CHA Conference in April, which I plan to attend, does not have any workshops for LTC specifically. I believe we can learn and adapt from the hospital stories, but it is a concern for me, and I would think it is for other LTC pastoral care/mission directors also, that we seem to be left out with examples and perhaps unique concerns. While most of the issues are related to our ministry, we function very differently from hospitals.

Thank you for listening and for all that NACC does to keep us stay updated and informed. I look forward to Vision and find the articles helpful.

Sincerely wishing you many New Year Blessings,

S. Mary Anne Burkardt, scn
Louisville, KY