Although an educator in his own right, throughout much of his 28-year career Jackson Kytle served as a senior administrator at a number of

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1 Beacon The Vol.31 No.1/SPRING 2006 News from The HealthCare Chaplaincy A Multifaith Center for Pastoral Care, Education & Research INSIDE 2 Caring for the Spirit Begins with the Telling of One s Own Story 5 God and the Alzheimer s Patient 7 Chaplaincy Clinician Cares for U.S. Soldiers Overseas Plan into Action: HCC Welcomes First Vice President of Academic Affairs Jackson Kytle, PhD, has been appointed as The HealthCare Chaplaincy s first vice president of academic affairs. Formerly deputy provost of The New School in New York City, Dr. Kytle will now oversee The Chaplaincy s International Institute for Pastoral Education and Research, its four constituent programs, and the Spears library. Dr. Kytle s appointment was envisioned in our 2004 strategic plan, said Father Walter Smith, president & CEO of The HealthCare Chaplaincy. To consolidate and expand our principal education and research activities requires the practical experience and imagination of an accomplished educator and innovative administrator. Dr. Kytle is this kind of leader. Although an educator in his own right, throughout much of his 28-year career Jackson Kytle served as a senior administrator at a number of C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 6 Getting the Word Out HCC Educates Healthcare Administrators from across the Country Do hospital administrators value spiritual and emotional care? Recent Chaplaincy research strongly indicates they do, but a number of studies conducted by Chaplaincy researchers in 2004 and 2005 indicate that a majority remain unaware of the wide variety of contributions chaplains make to C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 4

2 Spirit Lifting the A Message from the Rev. Dr. Walter J. Smith, S.J., President & CEO Fans of the Harry Potter series of books and movies would readily be able to answer the trivia question: What is Professor Albus Dumbledore s pet? Of course, the answer is Fawkes, the phoenix. In the world of Harry Potter, the phoenix loomed large; its tears had miraculous healing power, and its song was frightful to the nefarious and of great comfort to the pure of heart. Was it purely coincidental that J.K. Rowling included a feather from Dumbledore s phoenix in the wizards wands of both the villainous Lord Voldemort and also of hero Harry Potter? In virtually all mythic traditions, the phoenix is an iconic bird with colorful gold and scarlet plumage whose main attribute is that it is reborn through fire. At the end of its long life cycle, it builds a nest, settles in, and ignites the funeral pyre. In the purifying flames, the aged body of the phoenix is consumed, allowing a new young bird to arise from the ashes. As I write, I have just returned from Atlanta where I joined many of our staff chaplains and management colleagues in celebrating with the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC) its sixtieth anniversary. The conference theme, Our Rising Presence, paid homage to the legendary phoenix. During its sixty years, the APC like its 45-year-old partner, The HealthCare Chaplaincy has undergone transformation and rebirthing. Today the APC is a diverse and strong advocacy voice for the profession of pastoral care. Like The Chaplaincy, its origins were rooted in the Protestant Christian tradition. Along parallel tracks, both The HealthCare Chaplaincy and the APC have garnered strength and broader purpose by embracing a multifaith, multiethnic, and multicultural identity and by accepting the mandate to lead. As we joined with some eight hundred attendees at the meetings in Atlanta, diversity and strength were evident. The conference invited significant thought leaders to be its plenary session speakers, including Japanese-American public health physician, Deputy Surgeon General Dr. Kenneth Moritsugu, and the Mormon obstetrician-gynecologist John Nelson who served from 2004 to 2005 as the 159th president of the American Medical Association. Our friends and colleagues, the Rev. Dr. Teresa Snorton, executive director of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, and Imam W. Deen Mohammed, the spiritual leader of many American Muslims, added to the roster of guests and speakers. Healing Moments Caring for the Spirit Begins with the Telling of Sr. Margaret Oettinger, OP, director of pastoral care at the Hospital for Special Surgery. One day an administrator at the Hospital for Special Surgery came to me with a patient referral. She told me that an 81-year-old patient I ll call him Donald was due to undergo surgery but would not sign the necessary consent forms. Having heard me use the phrase many times before in other contexts, she asked me if I would listen to the music behind Donald s words. She wanted to know what was going on with him emotionally that made him so resistant at this critical moment. I visited Donald and asked him to tell me his story. He told me that his wife, who had always been with him during all of his prior hospitalizations, had passed away just five months ago. Normally she would have helped him decide whether or not to sign a pre-surgery consent form. A religious person, Donald told me that most of the time he had been able to cope with the loss of his wife through prayer. He recalled for me how he had been comforted by the priest s words at his wife s funeral, who had said, Your wife s life has changed, but it hasn t ended. Still, Donald said, there were times, like now alone in the hospital and facing the anxiety of surgery when he was 2 The Beacon

3 But beyond the richness of the stimulating public programs and continuing education seminars, it was encouraging to see the rising role that the staff of The Chaplaincy is playing both within the APC and in the wider world of professional chaplaincy. Our staff members serve on the board of directors of the association, are numbered on the roster of its past presidents, chair national initiatives, organize and present workshops, and are recognized leaders within the profession. For its part, The HealthCare Chaplaincy this year became APC s first corporate member, lending its name and resources to further the work of this important national leader. Throughout the conference, we were consistently reminded how valued The HealthCare Chaplaincy s participatory leadership role is in the continual renewal and rebirthing of the pastoral care movement in North America. One manifestation of this leadership is the fact that The Chaplaincy s bi-weekly electronic newsletter PlainViews now in its third year of publication is reaching and shaping the thought and best practices of some 7,000 professional chaplains and healthcare administrators around the world. In our 45 years, we have come a long way from our genesis as the East Midtown Protestant Chaplaincy. For almost a decade, The HealthCare Chaplaincy has carried forth its mission from its pastoral care, education, and research home on East 60th Street and its administrative center on East 62nd Street. With the APC, our presence is rising. Together we renew a common commitment to excellence and leadership in the movement of multifaith pastoral care that requires us at times, like the phoenix, to rise from personal or professional ashes in order to fulfill our destiny and vocation. Happy anniversary to the Association of Professional Chaplains from your younger sisters and brothers who share with you this sacred partnership in ministry! The Rev. Dr. Walter J. Smith, S.J. President & CEO One s Own Story unable to feel his wife s passing as anything other than an unbearable loss. Seeing how much he had loved his wife, and how much strength she had clearly given him in times of illness, I asked if I could be present for him at this moment as his wife had been present. I wish you would be, he said. With that, Donald opened up with me emotionally. He was suddenly able to express so many difficult feelings of grief, anxiety, and, as his scheduled surgery grew closer, vulnerability. There were lots of tears, but they were healthy, cleansing tears. I was honored that Donald permitted me to serve as a reminder of the presence of God in the same way his wife once had. For that moment it was as if the three of us Donald, his departed wife, and I were working out his relationship with God together. Shortly later Donald agreed to sign the surgery consent form. But that was just one positive outcome. No longer shut off to his own grief, he became a more spiritually and emotionally open person. And perhaps most importantly, he was able to integrate his wife s loss so that he could call upon her as a source of spiritual strength in times of difficulty. 3 The Beacon

4 C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 1 HCC Educates Healthcare Administrators from across the Country fellow staff members, the institutions themselves, and the communities where they serve. To address this issue, and to help promote the newly launched national pastoral care consulting service, The Chaplaincy s associate vice president of strategic development, the Rev. George Handzo, presented a workshop on the value of professional multifaith pastoral care in medical settings at the March 2006 congress of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) in Chicago, Illinois. ACHE has a membership of over 30,000 healthcare executives who lead hospitals, healthcare systems, and other healthcare organizations. The HealthCare Chaplaincy Consulting Service, launched in 2005, is the most comprehensive pastoral care consulting service in America, offering a full range of options to healthcare and social service organizations to help them begin, expand, or evaluate an existing pastoral care department. (Visit for more information on the consulting service.) Our consulting services provide an important means by which The Chaplaincy is promoting best practices in pastoral care and education, not just in our Greater New York catchment area but across the country as well, said the Rev. Handzo, who heads the consulting service. For me, that s George s presentation at ACHE responded directly to the disconnect we identified in our national research on chaplain roles, said Kevin Flannelly, PhD, associate director of research for The Chaplaincy. Our presence at national meetings such as this, and our publications in professional journals like Hospital Topics and the ACHE s own Healthcare Executive educate healthcare administrators on the many ways chaplains can contribute to achieving their institutions goals, for instance by helping increase referrals to their hospitals and by facilitating patient/hospital conflict resolution. Judging by the number of Masters of Public Health Administration candidates attending the Rev. Handzo s seminar, the next generation of hospital administrators seem particularly receptive to the expanded role certified chaplains can play in their institutions. I was encouraged to see so many administrators-in-training attending George s presentation, said Jeanne Lee, The Chaplaincy s executive vice president and COO, and a former healthcare administrator herself. Many of them also took great interest in our exhibition promoting The Chaplaincy s new pastoral care consulting services. Visit for more information. the most important driver behind The HealthCare Chaplaincy Consulting Service. Our presence at ACHE underscored how big a contribution professional pastoral care can make, and how adaptable certified chaplains are in providing care in an ever-changing healthcare market. 4 The Beacon

5 Health & Healing God and the Alzheimer s Patient How Chaplains and Community Clergy Provide Spiritual and Emotional Care to Alzheimer s Patients and their Families Chaplain Judy Fleischman, the Rev. Jon Overvold, and the Rev. Dr. Martha Jacobs Religious professionals of every faith tradition can play an important role meeting the spiritual and emotional needs of Alzheimer s patients. That was the message delivered by HealthCare Chaplaincy clinicians the Rev. Dr. Martha Jacobs, the Rev. Jon Overvold, and Chaplain Judy Seicho Fleischman in a special panel discussion at a recent conference organized by The Chaplaincy in collaboration with Auburn Seminary and The Alzheimer s Association, New York Chapter. The program was specifically designed for professional clergy. My Chaplaincy colleagues and I wanted to offer a pastoral view on Alzheimer s to community clergy, many of whom have received little or no practical training on caring for their congregants with the disease, said Dr. Jacobs. This includes not just Alzheimer s patients, but also their friends and families who suffer in their own way from the disease. Chaplain Judy Fleischman, a former Chaplaincy student who completed her residency at a nursing home, concurred with the Rev. Jacobs, adding, Family members often feel a profound loss because their loved one can no longer play the same role (e.g., spouse, parent, sibling) within the family system, a role that all of the family members had been accustomed to all their lives. With the help of a pastorally-trained clergyperson, says Chaplain Fleischman, it s possible to find a modified role for the Alzheimer s patient so she or he can retain an important place within the family system. According to Chaplain Fleischman, the key is to help family members engage with Individuals who lost a family member due to Alzheimer s disease gathered at The Chaplaincy s Rockefeller Chapel for a memorial service conducted by the Rev. Dr. Martha R. Jacobs, associate director of education for community-based programs. the patient on an emotional level, even after the Alzheimer s patient becomes increasingly impaired cognitively. Certified healthcare chaplains are trained to communicate with their patients Alzheimer s and non-alzheimer s alike with an ear tuned to emotional and spiritual meaning rather than just objective content. Given this, the lack of cognitive clarity on the part of a patient is problematic but doesn t represent an insurmountable hurdle. As a therapeutic technique, pastoral caregiving requires us to be with Alzheimer s patients wherever they are, even if that means being with them thirty years in the past, said the Rev. Jon Overvold. By going where the patient is, we stand a better chance of figuring out what his anxieties and frustrations are and as a result can establish an emotional connection with the patient that is real. Even when Alzheimer s patients reach a very late stage of the disease, chaplains and clergy can still play a unique role helping patients remain engaged and emotionally well. Alzheimer s patients often recall their early religious experiences, which can open a door to patients who though cognitively challenged may still remember the prayers, rituals, and hymns of their youth. Helping patients access these deeply ingrained memories can help reveal other clues from the patient s background, said the Rev. Overvold. This information can help us in the here and now as we search for ways to reduce suffering, making the patient more comfortable, and potentially reducing conflicts with family and healthcare staff. 5 The Beacon

6 C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 1 HCC Welcomes First Vice President of Academic Affairs academically progressive institutions including Antioch University, Goddard College, and Vermont College. Dr. Kytle has worked in institutions that look at students as responsible agents in their own education rather than as passive objects or containers waiting to be filled with information, said the Rev. A. Meigs Ross, director of The Chaplaincy s Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program. The education we provide to our student chaplains is based on a very similar student-centered, experiential model. In CPE, the psychosocial and spiritual development of the student as a human person is inseparable from the pedagogical method. Though the potential benefits derived from this kind of learning are enormous, as Jackson acknowledges in his 2004 book, To Want to Learn, experiential education is often harder to do well than traditional approaches, which focus on the content being studied and frequently ignore important factors such as the motivation, interest, and overall maturation of the learner. Gauging academic success, also, is far simpler in traditional content-focused education, where the primary measure is simply how much information a student has absorbed. Professional research, qualitative and quantitative, can be of great use in creating tools for determining student progress, improving curricula design, and advancing professional development of the faculty, said Dr. Kytle, who shortly after earning his doctoral degree as a social psychologist from Columbia University served as a participating researcher in the Midtown Manhattan Restudy, an acknowledged classic in mental health epidemiology. In the ensuing years, Dr. Kytle taught and advised undergraduate and graduate students in Dr. Kytle spent his career at institutions that look at students as responsible agents in their educations rather than passive objects or containers waiting to be filled with information. research methods, survey construction and analysis, and design of scales and social indicators. I m so excited to work for an organization that recognizes the value of integrating its education and research programs, each improving the other, said Dr. Kytle. As the first executive to oversee both programs simultaneously, I m looking forward to even greater collaboration between these departments. Jackson Kytle s own professional journey has been a study in synthesizing seemingly disparate parts into a more complex and socially valuable whole. A lifelong learner in his own right, Jackson Kytle brings three decades of experience as an educator, academic theorist, and executive administrator to The Chaplaincy at a pivotal moment in its history as an international leader in the professions of pastoral education and research. Templeton post-doctoral research fellow Kathleen Galek, PhD, conversing with Jackson Kytle, who will oversee all of The Chaplaincy s education and research efforts, including the Templeton program. 6 The Beacon

7 Chaplaincy Briefs Several Chaplaincy faculty members were affirmed in leadership positions at the recent Bi-Regional East/Northeast Conference of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, the only national pastoral education accrediting and certifying body endorsed by the United States Department of Education. The Rev. Dr. Martha Jacobs and the Rev. George Handzo presented a workshop entitled Professional Spiritual Care: Maximizing Faith in a Faith Based Agency in March at the United Church of Christ Council for Health and Human Services Ministries annual meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dr. Jacobs is also the current president of the UCC Professional Chaplains and Counselors group. The HealthCare Chaplaincy established a partnership with St John s-riverside Hospital in Yonkers, New York and is beginning a pastoral care department at this 300- bed community hospital. Rabbi Nathan Goldberg, director of pastoral care and education at Beth Israel Medical Center, was elected to the editorial committee of the journal of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains. The Chaplaincy has recruited Chaplain Judith Seicho Fleischman as the first certified chaplain to be employed at Housing Works, the largest minority-controlled AIDS service organization in America. Chaplain Fleischman, a Zen Buddhist, is a former student in The Chaplaincy s pastoral care residency program. A Systematic Review of Religious and Spiritual Research in Social Work was published in the journal Social Work and Christianity in March. During the first quarter of 2006, three other original studies by Chaplaincy research staff were accepted for publication in the journals Holistic Nursing Practice, The Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling, and the Scottish Journal of Healthcare Chaplaincy. Chaplaincy Clinician Cares for U.S. Soldiers Overseas You never know where life is going to take you. One day, Chaplain Wilfredo Rodriguez was caring for patients in a Chaplaincy partner medical institution, the next he was on a plane to Iraq, embarking on his second tour of active duty in the region in just three years. A lieutenant in the United States naval reserve, Wilfredo provided pastoral care to the First Marine Expeditionary Forces in Kuwait in Currently, he ministers to patients of all faiths in a Surgical Shock Trauma unit in Habaniyah. The women and men serving here are extremely hard working. They re among America s finest, said Wilfredo in a recent e- mail to his Chaplaincy colleagues, I m honored to be among them. 7 The Beacon

8 Beacon The Vol.31 No.1/SPRING 2006 The HealthCare Chaplaincy is the nation s largest non-denominational multifaith center for pastoral care, education, and research. The Chaplaincy is one of the most efficient charities in the country, with more than 80% of its funds going directly to programs that support its mission. This newsletter is published for friends, supporters, and alumni/ae. Please send address corrections and other correspondence to The HealthCare Chaplaincy. Writer/Managing Editor Eric Sommer Design Brian H. Kim 315 E. 62nd Street, 4th Floor New York, NY Phone: Fax: Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID New York, NY Permit No.7131 Photography Brian H. Kim, Orah Moore Visit us online at Years Providing Compassionate Spiritual Care to People of All Faiths JOIN US FOR A JOURNEY THROUGH THE YEARS Over the next three Beacon issues, we ll be taking a look back at The HealthCare Chaplaincy s 45-year history. We ll begin this summer by reviewing the people and events that helped shape our clinical services department. Beginning with a staff of just one Protestant chaplain, The HealthCare Chaplaincy now employs thirty multifaith chaplains and, through its consultation service, helps build and improve pastoral care departments throughout the country. 8 The Beacon