Welcome to the Clinical Pastoral Care Center at St. Mark’s Hospital.
For over 30 years the Clinical Pastoral Care Center at St. Mark’s Hospital has been training professional chaplains, seminary students, clergy, lay people and health care providers to listen and support the spiritual needs of people in their care. St. Mark’s Hospital is a community hospital nestled in the foothills of the Wasatch mountains. With easy access to mountains, red rock deserts and cultural activities, Salt Lake City is increasingly seen as the destination of choice by many outdoor enthusiasts and other visitors.
Our approach to experiential theological education is designed to increase self-awareness and to develop and hone the students’ ability to provide spiritual care for patients, families, and staff. The CPE curricula are designed to enhance the personal, theological and professional competencies of clergy, religious orders, laypersons, and theology students. The CPE Program at St. Mark’s is a relational learning environment that fosters growth in pastoral formation, reflection, and competence; such an environment involves mutual trust, respect, openness, support, clarification and confrontation. Guiding principles/assumptions include:
For over 30 years the Clinical Pastoral Care Center at St. Mark’s Hospital has been training professional chaplains, seminary students, clergy, lay people and health care providers to listen and support the spiritual needs of people in their care. St. Mark’s Hospital is a community hospital nestled in the foothills of the Wasatch mountains. With easy access to mountains, red rock deserts and cultural activities, Salt Lake City is increasingly seen as the destination of choice by many outdoor enthusiasts and other visitors.
Our approach to experiential theological education is designed to increase self-awareness and to develop and hone the students’ ability to provide spiritual care for patients, families, and staff. The CPE curricula are designed to enhance the personal, theological and professional competencies of clergy, religious orders, laypersons, and theology students. The CPE Program at St. Mark’s is a relational learning environment that fosters growth in pastoral formation, reflection, and competence; such an environment involves mutual trust, respect, openness, support, clarification and confrontation. Guiding principles/assumptions include:
- One’s own personhood is the most important tool one has for providing pastoral ministry.
- Ministry takes place within the context of a relationship.
- Significant awareness of how one impacts the receiver of one’s care and how one is impacted by the recipient of one’s care is critical.
- One needs a basic understanding of one’s own faith perspective and how to use it to connect with the faith perspective of the recipient of one’s care.
- One needs a rudimentary awareness of how one’s personal history impacts his/her functioning.
- One needs openness to personal and professional growth.
These are but a sampling from world spiritual traditions. They represent the some of the ways that humanity has symbolized encounters with the Holy throughout history. In choosing students who will minister to our patients, we strive for diversity of religion, culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age and temperament. Clinical Pastoral Education is multi-faith and teaches ministerial professionals to experience difference with curiosity and respect. Pastoral care students and ministers of all faiths are supervised as they engage with persons from all faith traditions who are in crisis. Out of the intense involvement with persons in need, and through feedback from peers and supervisors, students develop awareness of themselves as persons and of the needs of those whose ways differ from their own. CPE students reflect on the human condition through theological exploration, personality theorizing and live encounters with patients, families and staff members.
Northumbrian Community Rule of Availability and Vulnerability
I say ‘Yes, my Lord’ in all the good times through all the bad times.
In the same way as the liturgies emerged from lives actually lived in community, so has the Community’s Rule. It is a response to that insistent question: “How then shall we live?” It is a call to risky living: it is not a comfortable or easy solution to life’s problems. Whilst we welcome any who wish to walk with us in seeking God, we ask that those who wish to become Companions with us in Community say “YES” to Availability and Vulnerability as their way of living. This involves availability to God and to others—expressed in a commitment to being alone with God in the cell of our own heart and to being available for hospitality, intercession and mission. Intentional vulnerability is expressed through being teachable in the discipline of prayer, saturation in the Scriptures and being accountable to one another, often through soul friendships. It also means “embracing the heretical imperative’ (challenging assumed truth), being receptive to constructive criticism, affirming that relationships matter more than reputation, and living openly among people as “church without walls”. This is not something to be entered into lightly!
What Students Say About Their Experience
"St. Mark’s CPE changed my life. The supervisors are caring, loving, kind, and dedicated. Through CPE at St. Mark’s, I learned to be me and I learned that that’s okay. I learned that God expects me to be no one other than who I am. I learned to tackle dysfunctional family dynamics and to challenge unhealthy systems. I didn’t become a different person so much as I became liberated to be the person God calls me to be. One unit of CPE is required for most Episcopal clergy. Compared to my seminary classmates, who took CPE elsewhere, I had a unique experience. While many of them saw CPE as an annoyance, I found it fulfilling. I found it so fulfilling, in fact, that I decided to return to St. Mark’s Hospital for a three-unit residency. It has proven to be a tremendous way for me to build on the lessons I learned during seminary, and now build my career in Chaplaincy."
-The Rev. Timothy J. Yanni, Lead Staff Chaplain, Ogden Regional Medical Center "The supervision and instruction at the St. Mark’s Clinical Pastoral Education program was fantastic. I was challenged and nurtured while learning how to provide the highest quality of spiritual care as part of a healthcare team. The learning opportunities at St. Mark’s are rich and well-developed. I cannot recommend this program highly enough.”
“I have been blessed to be able to spend my four units of CPE in the ACPE program here at St. Mark’s hospital. I have worked with supervisors and staff chaplains who love being chaplains and share this love with their students. They support and trust their students as they participate in the ‘adult method of learning.’ They represent chaplaincy as a continual learning, evaluating and growing experience.”
“I highly valued this program’s integration with the entirety of the hospital. The people make this program. The CPE staff work together very well to create a human, compassionate and open environment with which it is very easy to build trust and feel safe. I leave this unit with a profound gratitude with what has been painstakingly built here in this hospital over many decades. I’ve been enriched by the experience, and will wholeheartedly refer my younger brothers to apply to this program.”
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“Studying in the St. Mark’s Clinical Pastoral Education program was the best experience of my formation process. The supervision is insightful, incredibly knowledgeable and challenging. The pastoral care department is well integrated into the hospital; I know that I had opportunities that were unavailable to colleagues in other CPE programs. Referrals were frequent. I felt like part of the care team.”
“Let me begin by saying that, in all of my conversations about CPE with peers and classmates before coming to St. Mark’s, no one ever said CPE was a nurturing place or that they ever looked forward to being there. ‘Trial by fire’ and all that was usually the choice of words. And no one I know, not a single one, has ever opted to stay longer than a single unit. This alone speaks to the integrity and health of this program.
From my own personal experience with this program, I have little but praise to offer in terms of recommendations: I love the supervisors, supervision, group work, selection of didactic, and the learning experiences I’ve had at SMH. I got to see a C-section! That was awesome! No other CPE student I’ve ever“ met has been allowed to see a surgery. This program has taken the clinical method of learning seriously and given each of us the freedom to explore our learning goals.” |
Integration of Spiritual Care with St. Mark's Hospital
CPE students may come to Salt Lake City expecting to confront a homogeneous culture. This is a rapidly changing big city area with its attendant problems. Violence, drugs and domestic crimes are on the rise. Students experience this first hand in emergency department assignments.
Salt Lake City reflects Utah’s expanding Hispanic population. Salt Lake City School District reports over 80 different languages among their students, with 40% as English as Second Language (ESL) students. As the city changes, so does the racial and cultural make-up of the hospital. Students enjoy providing pastoral care to our diverse staff and patient population.
At St. Mark’s Hospital students find a varied patient population which includes ethnic, racial, religious, country of origin and sexual orientation diversity. Employees of St. Mark’s Hospital include many faith groups, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.
Because St. Mark’s has always included spiritual care as part of excellence in patient care, CPE students have unusual access to patients and staff throughout the hospital. Administrators, consultants, and faculty of St. Mark’s Hospital strongly support the CPE program and the clinical method of learning. The Hospital's medical staff and employees generally express great enthusiasm and respect for the CPE program and its CPE students. The students in turn appreciate the warmth and openness they experience in many areas of the hospital, including patient units, surgery, angiography, laboratory, administration, emergency department, and radiology.
Salt Lake City reflects Utah’s expanding Hispanic population. Salt Lake City School District reports over 80 different languages among their students, with 40% as English as Second Language (ESL) students. As the city changes, so does the racial and cultural make-up of the hospital. Students enjoy providing pastoral care to our diverse staff and patient population.
At St. Mark’s Hospital students find a varied patient population which includes ethnic, racial, religious, country of origin and sexual orientation diversity. Employees of St. Mark’s Hospital include many faith groups, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.
Because St. Mark’s has always included spiritual care as part of excellence in patient care, CPE students have unusual access to patients and staff throughout the hospital. Administrators, consultants, and faculty of St. Mark’s Hospital strongly support the CPE program and the clinical method of learning. The Hospital's medical staff and employees generally express great enthusiasm and respect for the CPE program and its CPE students. The students in turn appreciate the warmth and openness they experience in many areas of the hospital, including patient units, surgery, angiography, laboratory, administration, emergency department, and radiology.
