Loyola Chicago trains spiritually sensitive helpers - spirituality in Social Work and Nursing

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 28, 2001 by Rich Heffern

A new certificate program in Spiritual Care for Health Care Providers was recently inaugurated to meet these needs. Two core courses are provided: Theoretical Foundations of Spiritual Care for Health Care Providers, and Concepts and Applications in Care of the Human Spirit. A number of electives are available, including courses titled "Theologies of Suffering," "Foundations of Spirituality," "Spirituality for Ministry" and others.

Some elective courses are provided by Loyola's Institute of Pastoral Studies. Another elective is "Using the Arts to Minister to Self and Others," which is offered in Rome, Italy, during an annual summer program in Europe for Loyola students.

In addition to housing this certification program, the newly established Center for Spirituality and Spiritual Care in the School of Nursing will propel initiatives such as: development of spirituality and spiritual care threads throughout the undergraduate and graduate nursing curriculum, creation of course work on spiritual leadership, seminars addressing spirituality and spiritual care, and research colloquia on spirituality and spiritual care.

Loyola's Neihoff School of Nursing is the oldest academic nursing program in Illinois. The master's degree program has been rated in the top 10 percent of all National League for Nursing-accredited programs by U.S. News and World Reports' issue on best graduate schools.

Ann Solari-Twadell is director of the International Parish Nurse Resource Center in Park Ridge, Ill. She is also a doctoral candidate at Loyola's nursing school and helped to get the spirituality in nursing care initiative off the ground. According to Solari-Twadell, there are now 60 sites around the country offering a core curriculum emphasizing spiritual care in the nursing profession. "Many of these graduates go to work as parish nurses. Many are people who were already doing nursing with a heavy component of spiritual care," she told NCR.

"Increasingly the health care system is telling us that spirituality has a big place in the whole health picture, but in terms of actualizing this connection in hospitals, long-term health facilities, community clinics, etc., we have a long way to go," Solari-Twadell said. She said that the emerging emphasis on faith-based initiatives will prove an impetus to push this health care/spirituality connection even further. "This will bring the connections between nursing and religious concerns even more to the forefront," she said. "Where will the people be trained who will work in these faith-based programs that provide health care? Not in seminaries, but in the nursing schools."

A nurse who wants to integrate spiritual concerns into health care has to be able to separate spirituality from religiosity, she said. "You can talk with some patients only in terms of their religion; others are turned off by such talk, claiming to be spiritual but not religious."

Like social work, nursing has roots in religion, especially in the Catholic tradition. One of the central charisms of many women's religious orders was nursing. Catholic hospitals in the first half of the 20th century were often staffed solely by nurses who were also religious sisters.