Learning Goal #2 Team Approach

I am beginning to understand the roles of the other members of the Interdisciplinary Team and how they work together, so that I can participate effectively and make a positive contribution to the overall care of patients and their families. 

I will meet the doctors, nurses, social workers, case managers, dieticians and housekeepers on the interdisciplinary teams on my floors; participate weekly in interdisciplinary rounds and staff meetings; reflect on participation in interdisciplinary rounds with my individual supervisor; and identify areas for growth and role play an interdisciplinary round with the spiritual care team

           

My goal is to be able to participate in weekly rounds effectively and collaborate with other members of the Interdisciplinary Team in the care of patients I visit.

Learning Goal #3 Emotional Mindfulness

I want to be able to enter into what patients with cancer are feeling because this is essential to offering  compassionate spiritual care for them. I want to be mindful of what I am feeling and help patients and family members who are dealing with cancer identify and share their own feelings.  

I want to notice the emotions that come up for me as I offer spiritual care to cancer patients and their family members and reflect upon them; observe words, signs, body language, facial expressions and tone of patients and their family members and confer with them about their feelings; and process the observations and reflections that come up in myself, patients and family members with the spiritual care team and my supervisor to improve my practice of spiritual care.       

My goal is to be able to identify and share my own feelings about cancer and help cancer patients and their families identify and share what they are feeling. 

Learning Goal #4 Spontaneous Prayer

The prayer style I am used to is reciting or singing prayers that are written down.  One of the areas I am focusing my learning on this year is  praying spontaneously with people of other Christian and non-Christian faiths.

To do this I plan to expand my prayer vocabulary; listen for the needs that patients and family members want to pray for; take cues from patients and family members and mirror them in prayer; practice giving thanks; asking for forgiveness, asking for healing, and giving blessings; ask a member of the Spiritual Care Team to be my goal partner; and write a verbatim about using spontaneous prayer to get feedback from my peers.

                                   

I hope to become more comfortable approaching people of other faiths or no faith tradition and and able to pray for their needs spontaneously when that is desired and appropriate.

Saint Mary Magdalen Berkeley

I have been transitioning to a new community in Saint Mary Magdalen Parish in Berkeley and a new ministry in spiritual care of hospital patients.  I live in the convent next to the School of the Madeleine.  There are six of us in the community.  One Sister serves in pastoral ministry at Saint Monica Catholic Church in Moraga, one serves as a Lector and Eucharistic Minister at Saint Mary Magdalen Parish and another works in development for the School of the Madeleine. These three and myself are all Dominican Sisters.  

Two Sisters from other religious communities are living with us.  One is a Sister of Our Lady of Perpetual Help from Korea.  She ministers in the Catholic  Bible Life Movement in several local parishes and the other is a Lovers of the Holy Cross Sister from Hanoi Vietnam.  She is studying for a Master of Divinity at the Jesuit School of Theology.

Saint Mary Magdalen Parish was founded by the Dominican Friars in 1923.  The convent was built for the Dominican Sisters in 1937 and remodeled along with other improvements that were made to the church, school and rectory between 1975 and 1981.  Mass is celebrated Monday through Saturday at 8:00 am and 5:30 pm. The public is welcome to pray Morning and Evening Prayer with the Dominican Friars in the church twenty minutes before Mass.  We Sisters pray Morning Prayer in our chapel at 6:00 am and Night Prayer in community at 7:00 pm.  On Sundays Mass is celebrated at 8:00, 9:30 and 11:00 am in the Parish.