I met today with new summer interns in our health system's Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program. One of them will be coming to get his or her clinical experience in my hospital, and this was our opportunity to meet. I had a chance to describe my hospital, and to give them some sense of who I am (which may or may not help someone decide to come work with me). I also shared with them that thirty years ago I was myself off for my seminary- and church-required first unit of CPE. They're excited, and scared, and I remember enough to empathize.
Once again, I'm going to be looking for CPE students who are blogging their experiences. I'll check in as I can, and make encouraging comments as I can. I've started a list below of sites I've found, and I'll edit to add sites as I can.
May God bless them all, and provide them the experience this summer that will best support and build their ministries. And remember: there are no bad experiences in CPE. There are good experiences, and good learning experiences.
chrispritchett.net
Law And Gospel
PREPARE YE
SEARCH THE SEA
Seminary life
The Truth Will Make You Odd
And for a different view, follow Alan, a Resident in Supervisory CPE, at abayye. He's been blogging aspects of his CPE experience for some time now. As both a Supervisory Resident and a rabbi, he brings a different perspective, one that taps different sources in our Abrahamic tradition.
4 comments:
Ah, yes... An experience I prefer much greatly in *hindsight*!
derek, I understand. As it is, I have more units of CPE than is good for one's mental health, I think. On the other hand, I'm still in clinical ministry, and while not a Supervisor, do contribute to the educational experiences of students here. And I am convinced there is no substitute: no other educational activity in preparation for ministry provides anything like the opportunity for experience, experiment, challenge, and personal growth.
I appreciate the shout-out, but it seems to me that the confidentiality requirements pertaining to medical care virtually preclude blogging about CPE.
I mentioned this to my adult kids last night and they said they didn't see the problem with anonymous blogging. But my feeling was that, were I a patient or family member who discovered my situation featured in a blog, no matter how minimally referenced or well disguised, I would be furious.
Off to see how others handle this . . .
gannet girl:
Thanks for the response, and I think anyone would certainly respect your preferences on this.
You are certainly correct that there is much a blogger couldn't share. You couldn't share protected health information about patients, certainly. Nor could you share details of what happens within your peer group. Others, however, have felt appropriate sharing their own internal processes and comments on their own learning. A blogger could certainly share, for example, content of and reflection on a didactic presentation or lecture. A blogger could share internal struggle and growth.
You might review, too, some medical blogs in which information is shared based on categories of patients instead of individual patients; or where, as in research, information relevant to the discussion is provided without identifying information that should be protected.
But, again, I absolutely agree that there are things one should not share.
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