Journal of Sacred Work

Day 120 - Shared Pain

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice-President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

     Henri Nouwen, internationally renowned priest and author, consciously worked out what he called a theology of the heart and a spirituality borne of solitude, community, and compassion. Much like Thomas Merton, Nouwen stressed the importance of relationship when speaking about pain, suffering, and those things that weigh on our hearts.

     In the collection of his writings titled The Inner Voice of Love, Nouwen suggested pain is always connected to specific circumstances; we suffer because of hurt that has occurred in a specific time and in a specific place. Feelings of rejection, abandonment, or even uselessness are rooted in concrete events. Each experience of pain is indeed unique. Nouwen challenged the notion, however, that uniqueness means separateness. He wrote: "as long as you keep pointing to the specifics, you will miss the full meaning of your pain. You will deceive yourself into believing that if the people, circumstances, and events had been different, your pain would not exist. This might be partly true, but the deeper truth is that the situation which brought about your pain was simply the form in which you came in touch with the human condition of suffering. Your pain is the concrete way in which you participate in the pain of humanity."

     The paradox of shared pain is that healing, according to Nouwen, means moving from your pain to the pain. Focusing on the specific circumstances creates the opportunity for anger, resentment, and even regenge-seeking (although sometimes it seems we thinly disguise that motive as rational justice or fairness). Real healing comes from realizing personal pain is simply a share of humanity's pain and opens the possibility of compassionate living.

     Nouwen's hope was that we would find the way to live in solidarity with each other, including the hungry, the homeless, the prisoner, the refugee, the sick, and the dying letting our personal pain become part of what is shared among us all. When we can see our pain not as unique but shared, suffering is also shared, and the burden becomes lighter for us all. In that shared place we find solace and healing. In the eyes of other we see ourselves. Sound familiar? Sounds like Love to me.

Day 119 - Thank You

Thanks to you who come here
each day. Whether or not you comment,
I am grateful for the fact that, together,

we have created a space where
we join, unseen, to
share some of what we wonder.

Thank you for coming to this place where,
we commune
through this odd area, connecting
with words & beyond.

We are not strangers, but caregivers

who know the day/night needs of others.

What is it,
today, that weighs upon your heart?

-Erie

Day 118 - Pastimes & Poetry

  

It's one of the most rare and exciting plays in baseball. Players steal bases all the time. But, stealing  home? The last time a member of the Boston Red Sox did it was in 1994. I've never seen it happen live. So, it came as a special treat for fans to watch the gifted left fielder, Jacoby Ellsbury, pull off the magic trick against the Red Sox arch rival, the New York Yankees.
   If you're not a baseball fan, you may be asking two questions already: So what? and, What does this have to do with caregiving?
   For a brief time during the game on Sunday evening, I forgot that the next day was Monday. I forgot that my everyday work involves helping charities that deal with the worst kind of human suffering. The Baptist Healing Trust supports organizations that care for people at their best and their worst. Alienated teenagers seek shelter at the Oasis Center. Wives pummeled and terrorized by their husbands escape to the love and shelter provided by the YWCA. Prostitutes struggling to rise about their drug addiction enter the open arms of Magdalene. The terminally ill find themselves surrounded by love at Alive Hospice.
   Who cares about the glory of a baseball player and his team as they leap in celebration over an uncommon accomplishment, the torch of their victory held high? For awhile, and into Monday morning, I did. And I felt better knowing that I had seen poetry in motion in the form of a man racing toward home, and arriving safely.

   What are the pastimes that bring you joy and relief?

   Here is a poem for you.

April's Seven O'clock Sun

I was searching
for a torch

to lead me
through the night

forest when I
brushed a stand

of bamboo huddling
close, each already lit,

a 19th century crowd
gathered to hail

the prince of evening,
each one struggling,

like me, to hold high
their fading flame.

-Erie Chapman

[photo of Jacoby Ellsbury by Matthew J. Lee, Getty Images]

Day 117 - Watching April's End

Part of the practice of presence is teaching ourselves to observe the earth as she changes. I never noticed the end of April until I sought to write about her demise.

 April's End
...the Root of the Wind is Water. - Emily Dickinson

Your hands soften as
you rest them on your

lap. The scent of boxwood & jasmine drift from your hair confusing air

laced with your lilac
& lavender. My winter

holds the single
odor of still trees.

Your breath carries
every color, reminding

me that I will die more
than once, each time reaching

for your scent
as if I might store it

on the back of my hand
to breathe again in October

long after the wind has buried
you

beneath the lake.

-Erie Chapman

Days 114-116 - Living in Emergency - Doctors With Love

Lord relieve me of my physical pain. I can deal with the spiritual pain.  - Oscar Wilde

   Wilde knew whereof he spoke since the great writer spent two years at body-ripping and soul-tearing labor in a British prison in the 19th century. In the midst of physical pain, we agree with what Wilde wrote. But, in the midst of spiritual pain, do we not feel a certain agony that may exceed that which assaults our bodies?
    The astounding documentary, Living in Emergency, screened recently at the Nashville Film Festival and hopefully in wide release soon, portrays the quietly heroic efforts of the courageous volunteers of Doctors Without Borders. One of the four doctors profiled, T.C. Krueger, M.D., is a Nashville acquaintance who has suddenly become one of my heroes.

   In the film, we see Dr. Krueger and his colleagues diving into hell to heal the wounds of strangers. "Maybe fixing pain is a way of fixing myself," Dr. Krueger says at one moment. Yet it is this doctor's skill and strength that stagger our hearts. His willingness to suffer both physical discomfort and spiritual pain to help others describes the original meaning of the now overused word "awesome."  Next to the work of these doctors, the everyday drudgery of most hospital meetings and the regular efforts we engage in the comfort of clean, well-lighted, well stocked places seem puny indeed.

   Living in Emergency, directed by the brilliant Mark Hopkins, is the most powerful documentary I have experienced. It unflinchingly portrays physical pain among people in Liberia and the Congo in ways we don't want to see. It elevates and touches us with its searing truth. If we find the courage to look, we can only be moved by the excruciating torture these patients experience and the spiritual horror their caregivers engage as Love meets need in the most sacred of encounters. 

    The four doctors profiled are, of course, representative of thousands more not seen by the camera. Yet, they are a tiny percent of the world's caregivers. After all, who among us would voluntarily enter the cauldron of the Congo or Somalia or Sri Lanka to work long hours in terrible conditions for no pay? The answer appears in this marvelous film. And it's easy to see why Doctors Without Borders was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

   The truth is, so many more of our fellow humans inflict pain instead of healing it. Even more of us simply turn away, as if this truth was some kind of lie we won't accept. 

    What do you think about physical and spiritual pain? How do you translate what you know of these kinds of pain into being a better vehicle of Love?

-Erie Chapman

Day 113 - In the Fullness of Time

Today's meditation was shared by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

"You have blessed me and given me peace." Karen Updike

In the spirit of this week's meditations, words written by a lovely poet may awaken in you a heart of gratitude and peace, a place of rest in your day of giving care. The poet is sister-in-law to Erie Chapman and she offers glimpses into simple yet deeply meaningful moments of living. In this season of change may her words be sweet balm to your hearts and spirits.

Oh incremental slowness

I love watching you spread

green dotted lines

over winter plowed fields!

I love watching you creep

a brilliant yellow up ragwort spires,

and bulge tight knots of hydrangea

into creamy, billowing blooms.

 

In your time, in your time,

the vine lengthens and twines,

the Labrador violet curls

farther along rocky cracks.

I see Irish moss sending forth

its starts, feathered grasses

unfurling their plumes,

milkweed pods swelling with silk.

 

Oh slow steady force

unfolding the world,

you have blessed me

and given me peace.

      

       In the Fullness of Time - Karen Updike

Day 112 - Caregiver Rest

Part of the purpose of the Journal is to offer respite for harried caregivers. We hope you can come to this Journal as part of your daily reflection and meditation. To this end, I offer some images from an opportunity I took yesterday afternoon to visit a place inside the Nashville City Limits called Radnor Lake Forest Preserve. I invite you to this place of rest, or to wherever you find comfort. I enjoyed my all to infrequent visit to a real forest. [I apologize for the conventional, "postcard style" quality of the photos I took.]

Photo 1 - A Corner of the Lake

Photo Two - Dogwood and Holly in April

Photo # 3 - Wings in the Water

Photo 4 - Lake, Mountains & Red Bud

Love and peace.

Erie

Day 111 - April Outside the Hospital

April in the Forest

The ground opens
in April

unbuttoning herself
to welcome the moon.

I have seen
this before. Or

maybe I haven't
ever seen the way

the leaves twirl
as they step from

their buds. Or the
way the earth

swallows more of me
each spring

as I melt back
into her, part of me

struggling against the
quicksand. The rest

exhaling relief.

I am remembering
what I knew as a baby

& forgot until this April
when I saw the earth open

in the center of the forest.

-Erie Chapman

Day 110 - How We Learn Love

   In case of fire, what things would you seek to save from the flames? I'm assuming that human life comes first. What comes next?
   For me, the Baby Book, whose cover appears above (with my nickname, "Chip" pasted on by my dad) would be at the top of the list of things to be saved. It was lovingly assembled by my mother and father in the mid 1940s.
   How do caregivers first experience Love? For me, one of the ways I felt loved was when I discovered that my parents had kept this record of the early years of my life. They gave this gift to each of their four children. Of course, I don't really know the baby and little boy that appears in these now-ancient pages except by scattered memories of things young senses captured. Although I know it's me in the photos, how can we know the one year-old that was once us?
   What caregivers often encounter are patients who are passing through some of the most critical moments of their lives. Caregivers meet patients who may be close to the end of their lives or right at its beginning.
   Because I worked close-by the caregivers at the hospitals I led, I sometimes attended births. In a few cases, I encountered mothers and fathers who were remarkably indifferent to the arrival of the new lives they spawned. Perhaps life had been hard on them. My guess is that it was difficult for them to pass along Love which they had not felt in their early lives.
   Objects are of no importance unless they connect us to Love's eternal stream. That is one of the things I experience as I turn the yellowed pages of my own baby book. I can feel my mother's love as she wrote, with her fountain pen, her record of her first son's first months. And I can feel the hand of my father as he clipped headlines of the day to paste in the book as if, somehow, his son was a part of the world news.
   What caregivers can do is to serve as pathways for Love's entry into the world. Because of the exquisite vulnerability of humans in pain, caregivers have a unique opportunity to heal by letting Love flow through them. This happens when caregivers are truly present to the need of the person before them.
   Who is it we call for when we are in pain? Is it not our mothers? And when mothers cannot be present, caregivers may fulfill this role by offering the kind of selfless love a mother gives.
   Whether or not you were fortunate enough to have parents who kept a record of your early years, you can seek to discover some key things in your life: How do you think you first experienced Love's gift? How did you learn of Love as you grew from baby to young child to adult? How do you pass on this gift of Love to the patients or fellow caregivers who fall within your touch each day and night?

-Erie Chapman

p.s. At left is a photo of two pages from my baby book that includes, at right, a lock of my hair, preserved as if I was some kind of rock star. Perhaps, for my parents, I was. What a lucky baby I was.

Day 107-109 - Open Forum

“Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy.” -From an Inuit Proverb

Day 106 - Day Dreams

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

"I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking..."  Georgia O'Keeffe

     What differentiates individuals like CEO Laurie Eberst and artist Georgia O'Keefe (Poppy, 1927, above) from the rest of the world? How is it that their dreams become reality and create for the rest of us places of healing, rest, and comfort? Robert Frost once noted the wonder of the human brain suggesting "it starts working the moment we get up in the morning and does not stop until we get into the office." What a funny statement but perhaps true for many who come to work in our places of health and healing. I wonder if we have lost touch with the wonder of our sacred work. Wonder seems to appear most when we let our minds wander and our hearts engage.

     Daydreaming is something we all do and is, as opinioned by some, to be the default state of the mind. Malia Mason of Columbia University suggests we constantly walk around in this state and suspend that mode of thought when confronted by something that requires our attention. Although at times daydreaming helps us sort out relational conversations or solve a problem at hand, researchers seem to agree we make associations that lead to creative ideas when we drift from a linear, well rehearsed solution and let our thoughts wander. Artists speak of their muse when in reality it is their own daydreaming that is speaking quietly behind the thought.

     It seems the easy part is letting our mands wander. The greater challenge may be in giving enough awareness to notice what's going through our minds and hearts. According to psychologist Jonathan Schoolar, a professor at the University of California, it is the people who notice their daydreams who are able to use them for effective productivity and creativity. Schooler suggests one way to discvoer this for ourselves is to set aside time to daydream. In other words, just sit and gaze out the window, often. The beauty of our world certainly found expression through the mind's eye of Geogia O'Keeffe and patients who come through the doors of Mercy Gilbert Hospital are touched by the healing once only imagined in the mind's eye of Laurie Eberst. Perhaps in your daydreams are the answer we all seek. Perhaps Love is waiting there, expecting you, and ready to be shared with the rest of us.

 

 

Day 104-105 - Healing Hospital CEO of the Year

*Laurie Eberst Named Healing Hospital CEO of the Year

Arizona Hospital Chief is model of Loving Leadership

Laurie Eberst, President and CEO of Mercy Gilbert Hospital, part of the Catholic Health West Health System, has been named Healing Hospital CEO of the Year for 2008 by the Nashville, Tennessee-based Baptist Healing Trust (The Trust.)

“The six-member national panel was unanimous in selecting Laurie Eberst,” according to Erie Chapman, President & CEO of the Baptist Healing Trust. “Ms. Eberst is the epitome the kind of leader this award was designed to recognize. She is simultaneously strong-minded and compassionate. Her leadership has enabled the growth of an exception culture of radical loving care at Mercy Gilbert.” Chapman continued.

Ms. Eberst is the second CEO to receive this recognition from the Baptist Healing Trust. George Mikitarian, President and CEO of Parrish Medical Center,Titusville, Florida was last year’s recipient.

Eberst’s loving leadership is contagious. As Kim Hashim, vice president and chief nursing officer at Mercy Gilbert said in NurseWeek magazine, “We have learned that providing a loving and compassionate environment that is aesthetically pleasing promotes healing.”

This loving contagion spreads to frontline staff as well.  “Radical loving care is an outflow of an inner reality of love, compassion, kindness, peace, patience, goodness, self-control, and joy,” says Libby Pierce, RN. “As a pediatric nurse, I look and listen to the whole heart of a person, of a child and their family and I go the extra mile to meet the spoken – and the unspoken – needs.”

Throughout her career, Eberst, originally trained as an R.N., has established a strong reputation as a loving leader who knew how to integrate her nurse training with superb leadership ability. Integrity, compassion, and caring are hallmarks of her leadership style. She stays in close touch with first line staff by rounding regularly, conducting question and answer sessions, and visiting patients.

Eberst was an early advocate of the concepts of Radical Loving Care and Sacred Work advanced by the Trust. Her assistant, Jan Reed, even designed a lapel-pin version of the three-part symbol of Radical Loving Care which is now distributed nationally by the Trust. As one travels with Eberst around Mercy Gilbert, it is easy to see why she's been successful. Her interactions with employees are a model of loving leadership.

           The Baptist Healing Trust extends its congratulations to Laurie Eberst for winning recognition as Healing Hospital CEO of the Year for 2008. We believe she will always represent the best in what hospital leadership should be for organizations that care about both mission and overall excellence. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 102-104 - Top Ten Healing Hospital List & CEO of the Year

 Healing Trust Names Top Ten Healing Hospitals™

      Mercy Gilbert #1 - Eberst Named CEO of the Year

   The Baptist Healing Trust, through its subsidiary, Healing Trust Services, is pleased to announce its 4^th annual list of Top Ten Healing Hospitals™ for 2008. Topping this year’s list is Mercy Gilbert Medical Center,Gilbert, Arizona(CHW) Mercy’s CEO, Laurie Eberst was also named Healing Hospital™ CEO of the Year by the six-member national selection panel. (*see related article below)

   The panel also singled out the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota for its exceptional ability to consistently deliver the finest overall medical care of any organization in the country. This year, the Baptist Healing Trust offers special acknowledgment to the Mayo Clinic for the first “In a Class By Itself” recognition.

   The panel also noted three research and teaching hospitals as rising stars with respect to the issue of loving care. In addition, three general hospitals have embarked on the journey toward establishing Healing Hospital™ environments. These six are noted rising stars.

   “Healing Hospital™ recognition was created to honor hospitals and leaders that have made a special commitment to creating cultures of Radical Loving Care” according to Erie Chapman, President and CEO of the Trust. This year’s selection panel reviewed hospitals coast-to-coast before making their decisions. The panel included Dr. George Mikitarian, President and CEO of three-time Healing Hospital™ winner Parrish Medical Center, Titusville, Florida; Jason Barker, President and CEO, St. Mary’s Hospital, Apple Valley, California; Dennis Vonderfecht, President & CEO, Mountain States Health System, Johnson City, Tennessee; Roy Elam, M.D., Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Erie Chapman, J.D., President & CEO of the Baptist Healing Trust; and Catherine Self, Sr. Vice President of the Trust.

#1. Mercy Gilbert Hospital, Gilbert AZ. (Catholic Healthcare West.) Laurie Eberst, CEO  http://www.mercygilbert.org  

This gorgeously conceived, built and operated hospital, located in a Phoenix suburb, is the epitome of the Healing Hospital™. Led by the 2008 CEO of the year, Laurie Eberst, Mercy Gilbert has established an extraordinary reputation for Radical Loving Care. It began when Eberst decided to do a brilliant and uncommon thing. As the hospital was being built, she began hiring staff that, in addition to their regular credentials, possessed A Servant’s Heart. She understood that it wasn’t the building that would make a great hospital; it was the way the hospital was staffed and run. Using her own leadership initiative and drawing, as well, from her colleague Dr. Mikitarian, at Parrish Medical Center, a previous Healing Hospital CEO of the Year, and others, Eberst assembled a top notch team and has led the growth of an admirable culture of loving care. The hospital has been so successful that an addition was planned and built that doubled inpatient beds. In addition, we recognize Mercy Gilbert for: Actively creating a healing physical environment, integration of work design and technology, with a culture of Radical Loving Care, and note these programs:

§         No One Dies Alone program – volunteers trained to be loving companion in absence of family/friends

§         Reflection touch cards at each door - "Pause, Reflect, Heal"

§         Sacred work pins for all employees

§         Implementation of the Healing Code Blue experience in which the code team lingers with a patient who has passed away to honor the life of that patient.

§         High employee and patient morale throughout the organization.

§         Solid financial performance.

                                 §         Arizona Business Magazine (#1 Small Size Acute Care)

            §         Previous Top Ten Healing Hospital (Ranked #2);

                                 §         Phoenix Business Journal (Best Places to Work in the Valley)

The Baptist Healing Trust, along with the Blue Ribbon panel, extends its congratulations to Mercy Gilbert Hospital for achieving highest recognition as a Healing Hospital™

The other top ten Healing Hospitals™ recognized by the Trust and the panel are listed below. Each will receive a certificate along with permission to represent their organization as an officially recognized Healing Hospital™ for their performance during 2008. Each has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to patient and employee-centered care that has won them the recognition they deserve.

2. St.Joseph Hospital (St. Joseph Health System) Larry Ainsworth, president 525 beds, 3800 employees

     -Magnet designation for nursing 

     -U.S. News & World Report America’s Best Hospitals for Orthopedic Care, 2007, 2008 

     -Leapfrog Group (Top Hospitals) -Gallup (Great Workplace Award, 2007, 2008) 

     -Superior rating in overall patient experience again in 2008 California rating agency.    

     - HCAHPS Score: above 80 %

3. Griffin Hospital, Derby, CT. Patrick Charmel, President and CEO   http://www.griffinhealth.org. 

§         160 bed/1200 employees

§         Committed to personalized, humanistic, consumer-driven health care in a healing environment;

§         Planetree Affiliate – home hospital

§         The Numerous Awards won by Griffin include:

§         2008 Top Leadership Team in Healthcare (Health Leaders Magazine)

§         Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence” – 2008 and 2006 (top 5% of hospitals nationally) – Patients receiving care at a hospital rated in the top five percent in the country have, on average, a 27 percent lower chance of mortality and a 14 percent lower risk of complications.

§         Fortune Magazine (100 Best Companies to Work)

§         HCAHPS Score: 80% or above.

4. Baylor Medical Center Dallas (BaylorHealthCare John B. McWhorter, President;1,000 beds/5225 employees/faith-based)

             §         2008 NQF National Quality Healthcare Award;

             §         The Leapfrog Patient-Centered Care award;

             §         U.S. News & World Report designated Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas (Baylor Health System - Joel Allison CEO) top 50 hospitals in five categories in its 2008 "America's Best Hospitals" issue (16 years in a row);

      §         Consumer Choice Award by the National Research Corporation (NRC)

•                Magnet Award for "Excellence in Nursing" from the American Nurses Credentialing

•             HCAHPS Score above 80%

5. Kings Daughters Medical Center, Brookhaven, MS. Phillip Grady, President and CEO.www.kdmc.org

122 beds; 327 employees - providing quality health and wellness services in a Christian environment

1. HCAHPS Score: nearly 90% - among the highest in the country.

2. Exceptional employee morale. 
   THE SECOND FIVE:  

6. Sharp Healthcare; San Diego (regional,four-hospital health care delivery system based in San Diego, California. Michael W. Murphy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sharp HealthCare http://www.sharp.com

         14,000 employees

§         Vision: Transform the health care experience for our patients and their families.

§         Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award;

§         Gold-level award recipient by the California Council for Excellence (CCE) for the California Awards for Performance Excellence (CAPE) program, the state-level affiliate of the Baldrige Award, in 2006. 

                    §         Four hospitals in system

7. Highline Medical Center, Burien, Washington.  Mark Benedum, CEO http://www.highlinemedicalcenter.org
   

§         1500 employees; 200 physicians on medical staff

§         Awards include:

o       2008 Washington State Quality Award (Governor’s Office)

o       2008 AHA Silver Performance award

o       2008 “5-Star” Rating from Cleverly & Associates (an Ohio-based firm specializing in healthcare financial and operational benchmarking studies and reports)

                       First Planetree hospital in Washington (healing gardens available to patients and staff)

 

8. Skagit Valley Hospital, Mount Vernon, WA Gregg A. Davidson, CEO.  http://www.skagitvalleyhospital.org

§         150 beds/1000 employees

§         To serve our communities with compassion and dignity, one patient at a time; recent expansion incorporating many healing hospital design principles.

§         High patient, employee and physician satisfaction.

 

9. Redwood Memorial, Fortuna, CA (St. Joseph of Orange).Vice President Bob Branigan 707-725-3361 http://www.redwoodmemorial.org    

§         25 Bed/ 1200….critical access hospital

§         Values: Dignity, service, excellence justice

§         HCAHPS Score: n/a

§         cornerstones program focusing orientation/on-boarding on holistic perspective, journey,

§         healing gardens, labyrinth

 

10. Mercy Health System, Janesville, WI. Javon R. Bea  President and CEO    www.mercyhealthsystem.org

§         This Three-hospital system totals 364 beds and 3,856 partners, 285 of whom are employed physicians; 65 facilities serving 24 communities throughout southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois

§         In the opinion of the panel, MHS hospitals provide exceptional health care services resulting in healing in the broadest sense….promoting physical, emotional and spiritual healing. Encouraging greater family unity. Helping patients and loved ones gain acceptance of a medical condition. Providing compassionate support.

§         Number 11 in Top 100 Integrated Healthcare Networks (Verispan) and Modern Healthcare Magazine;

§         2007 Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award;

§         Ranked number two in the nation on AARP’s Best Employers for Workers Over 50 list;

§         Working Mother magazine's 2007 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers

 

*Rising Stars  Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston ; Cleveland Clinic, Boston's Beth Israel Hospital

General Hospitals & Systems; Memorial Hospital, Jasper, Indiana; Baptist First, Montgomery, Alabama; Hillcrest Baptist, Waco, Texas

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

*Laurie Eberst Named Healing Hospital CEO of the Year

Arizona Hospital Chief is model of Loving Leadership

Laurie Eberst, President and CEO of Mercy Gilbert Hospital, part of the Catholic Health West Health System, has been named Healing Hospital CEO of the Year for 2008 by the Nashville, Tennessee-based Baptist Healing Trust (The Trust.)

“The six-member national panel was unanimous in selecting Laurie Eberst,” according to Erie Chapman, President & CEO of the Baptist Healing Trust. “Ms. Eberst is the epitome the kind of leader this award was designed to recognize. She is simultaneously strong-minded and compassionate. Her leadership has enabled the growth of an exception culture of radical loving care at Mercy Gilbert.” Chapman continued.

Ms. Eberst is the second CEO to receive this recognition from the Baptist Healing Trust. George Mikitarian, President and CEO of Parrish Medical Center,Titusville, Florida was last year’s recipient.

Eberst’s loving leadership is contagious. As Kim Hashim, vice president and chief nursing officer at Mercy Gilbert said in NurseWeek magazine, “We have learned that providing a loving and compassionate environment that is aesthetically pleasing promotes healing.”

This loving contagion spreads to frontline staff as well.  “Radical loving care is an outflow of an inner reality of love, compassion, kindness, peace, patience, goodness, self-control, and joy,” says Libby Pierce, RN. “As a pediatric nurse, I look and listen to the whole heart of a person, of a child and their family and I go the extra mile to meet the spoken – and the unspoken – needs.”

Throughout her career, Eberst, originally trained as an R.N., has established a strong reputation as a loving leader who knew how to integrate her nurse training with superb leadership ability. Integrity, compassion, and caring are hallmarks of her leadership style. She stays in close touch with first line staff by rounding regularly, conducting question and answer sessions, and visiting patients.

Eberst was an early advocate of the concepts of Radical Loving Care and Sacred Work advanced by the Trust. Her assistant, Jan Reed, even designed a lapel-pin version of the three-part symbol of Radical Loving Care which is now distributed nationally by the Trust. As one travels with Eberst around Mercy Gilbert, it is easy to see why she's been successful. Her interactions with employees are a model of loving leadership.

           The Baptist Healing Trust extends its congratulations to Laurie Eberst for winning recognition as Healing Hospital CEO of the Year for 2008. We believe she will always represent the best in what hospital leadership should be for organizations that care about both mission and overall excellence.          

Day 100-101 - Open Forum

This is open forum day for caregivers. Also, be sure and watch Monday's Journal for the annual announcement of the Baptist Healing Trust's list of Top Ten Healing Hospitals for 2008 as well as The Healing Hospital CEO of the Year.

Day 99 - Life Chooses Life

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.    

      Emerging from shamanic traditions, Heart Laws articulate basic premises about our nature and being including the idea that life chooses life. The headlines of this week have been filled with what seems to be evidence to the contrary: life-destroying violence, anguish and bitterness, spoken and unspoken unmet needs. I'm told that the idea that life chooses life emerges from our inner beings who long for a sacred stillness - a stillness set apart from the ordinary. Finding our way into that stillness is not without its challenges. Habits of the mind and voices that surround us push us to ignore that inner hunger for stillness and quiet. The clutter of the day forces its way into the inner crevices of our lives, uninvited and, to the soul, unwelcomed.

     The need to do often outdistances our need to be. To be still, to be quiet, to be present to what is - to know the sweetness of what only we can truly know within the heart, the soul, the spirit. Today's meditation invites you into that still and quiet space, that sacred space that your heart and soul long for, and for this moment's pause not to be filled with words or thoughts, but simply a space, a place in time. Your heart will tell you what you most need to hear, Love will sing your song. Rest. Be. Enjoy.

Day 98 - Speed and the Caregiver

    I dipped back into David Whyte's riveting book, Crossing the Unknown Sea, and immediately found two pages on the subject of speed. Thinking to draw just one quote for the Journal, I found myself wanting to share a larger sequence of his writing with you.
   Velocity occupies so much of our lives. For caregivers, there is often the risk of speed swallowing up all of our lives. As Whyte writes:
   "Speed gets noticed. Speed is praised...Speed is self-important. Speed absolves us. Speed means we don't really belong to any particular thing or person we are visiting and thus appears to elevate us above the ground of our labors. When it becomes all-consuming, speed is the ultimate defense, the antidote to stopping and really looking. If we really saw what we were doing and who we had become, we feel we might not survive the stopping...So we don't stop...We keep moving on whenever any form of true commitment seems to surface....(emphasis mine)
   "The great tragedy of speed as an answer to the complexities and responsibilities of existence is that very soon we cannot recognize anything or anyone who is not traveling at the same velocity as we are...We start to lose sight of any colleagues who are moving at a slower pace, and we start to lose sight of the bigger, slower cycles that underlie our work. We especially lose sight of the big, unfolding wave form passing through our lives that is indicative of our central character."
   Whyte has his finger on our pulse, doesn't he? Consider how difficult it might have been for you to stop and read both of his paragraphs above? We think we need to be so busy withe other things. Meanwhile, our life travels by and we hasten our way to our end unable to pause enough to truly look into the mirror of being. 
   Whyte suggests that one way we know we're moving too fast is to consider how we react to a friend's illness. Do we find it a distraction to be present for the friend who needs us? Do we flee?
   Then, what happens when "we ourselves are touched by that mortality?" It is then that we may learn that "identities built on speed almost immediately fall apart...We find ourselves suddenly alone and friendless, strangers to even ourselves."
   Like the old saying, but seen in a new way, speed kills. We all know that efficiency is called for in some aspect of all of our lives. How do we hold ourselves in balance so that we do not become slaves to speed?

-Erie Chapman

Day 97 - Lady with the Lamp

How very little can be done under the state of fear.  - Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)

   Walking tent to tent during the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale carried about a lamp to guide her. And that is why suffering soldiers, aided by her presence, called her the "lady with the lamp." The light of her leadership would one day illuminate a new age in nursing.
   Prior to Nightingale, nursing was often a shoddy profession populated by nurses that were sometimes dirty, disheveled, and drunk. After Nightingale, nursing gradually grew into one of the most respected pathways to caregiving.
   Nightingale understood the need for cleanliness and discipline. Yet, she also knew that true caregiving was grounded not in fear, but in Love. It was Love that caused her to leave her rich and comfortable life to travel to the battlefields of war. She responded to her calling.
   One would think her arrival on the battlefield with her own band of nurses to aid the sick and wounded would have been greeted with joy. Instead, she was ridiculed by doctors who resented her presence.
   Why is Love so often rewarded with anger and hostility? What is it we fear?
   Nightingale spent her long life advancing nursing and caregiving. Although she was plagued for the last half of her life with chronic fatigue syndrome, the lady with the lamp championed nursing from Europe to America.
   Recognizing both the advantages and limitations of treating patients in institutions, Nightingale wrote: "Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization." She would no doubt be disappointed to see how much compassion has been frustrated by so many leaders in hospital nursing.
   So much of the caregiving load in America is carried by women. Perhaps, that is what caused this valiant leader to write, in 1852, "Women never have a half-hour in all their lives (excepting before or after anybody is up in the house) that they can call their own, without fear of offending or of hurting someone."
   With respect to love and compassion, have we progressed in nursing since Nightingale's time or not? If not, what can we do to restore the loving care of the past?

-Erie Chapman

Days 95 & 96 - Leading from Love

"I am an example of what is possible when girls, from the very beginning of their lives, are loved and nurtured by the people around them." - First Lady Michelle Obama

   Diana Gallaher sent me the above quote, delivered by First Lady Michelle Obama during her visit to London. "Nothing in my life's path would have predicted that I would be standing here," Ms. Obama told her audience. And we all know the magic in this statement. Growing up black and female in America remains a difficult and challenging experience. Growing up black and female and becoming First Lady of the world's most powerful nation seems as astounding as the impossible rise of the man by her side to the Presidency.
   What rings out from Ms. Obama's comment is the credit she gives to being "loved and nurtured" from the very beginning of her life. The Love she received has enabled her to lead from Love herself.
   It takes self confidence (self-love in the best sense) and a trusting view of humanity to lead from Love. Forget party affiliation and listen to President Obama's language: “It is also my responsibility to lead America into recognizing that its interests, its fate, is tied up with the larger world.”
   There has been an historic tendency for many American's to disdain interests beyond our borders. Yet, the fate of each of us is tied to that of "the larger world."
   Consider the role of caregiving in America. If we think of Love as finite, we may be inclined to dole it out like it was a role of dollar bills in our pocket. Once we recognize Love as infinite, we can begin to see ourselves as either vehicles of Love or its obstacle.
   When we let Love flow through us to children, whether or not they are "ours" we enable the development of remarkable people like Michelle Obama and so many others. This is what Annie Sullivan did for the blind and deaf Helen Keller, empowering one of the most beautiful spirits of the 20th century. "Annie brought her love into my darkness," Keller said. Absent the caregiving of Annie Sullivan, we might never have seen Keller's light.
   This is the opportunity that lies before us: to let Love's light flow through us so powerfully that it awakens the Love in all those around us. It is uncanny how powerful this Love can be in brightening the lives of those in pain.
   How have you seen the effects of Love in those around you in the caregiving environment.?

-Erie Chapman

Days 93 & 94 - Open Forum

[the mandala above was drawn by  Liz Wessel, R.N., M.S., who also submitted the writing below]

Healing Touch

May we console those who are exhausted,

inhibited or uncertain.

 

Help us to increase our capacity

to listen and respond to one another.

May we speak words of encouragement,

recognition and affirmation.

 

Give us the grace to meet the lonely, neglected,

ill, and misunderstood with patience,

understanding and acceptance.

 

May we be sources of strength,

hope and inspiration for one another.

Give us the strength to express our concern and grief.

 

May we embrace every chance to help, to heal-

touching not only individual persons

but also a wounded world.

 

Anonymous, from a book of reflections

by ~The Sister’s of St. Joseph of Orange

Day 92 - Shadows and Light of the Caregiver

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice-President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

     The shadows and light of the caregiver's home are filled with the shadows and light of the caregiver. The halls of many hospitals hold pictures and plaques recognizing the brightest and best among us. Sometimes the awards are for loyalty, productivity, exemplary, or even heroic behavior. Almost every organization has one - the heroes' walk of fame, prominently displayed and brightly lit.  

     But my memories are filled with images of the quiet heroes, the ones who stand in the shadow of others more visible and acclaimed. You would not know her name because she moves without calling attention to herself and speaks almost in a whisper. She has never been nominated for "Employee of the Year" and will never see her name published in the annals of medicine. Letters of recognition come and go but she is never referred to by name, just by her touch, her grace, her presence.

     My memories are filled with the face of a caregiver whose smile is mysterious and reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. He is available when needed, and just as willing to take the day off when the budget is too tight and someone must make the sacrifice. He goes where he is assigned and picks up where others have left off. He has been present to the lonely, compassionate to the wounded, faithful to the call. This quiet hero stands in the shadow but he stands firmly and without fail.

     A writer for the Henri Nouwen Society has suggested there is beauty in the shadows. In a society that focuses on the bright and beautiful, our sacred work is borne on the shoulders of the quiet and hidden ones that work silently in the shadows. It's the shadow that gives form and depth, and it is in the shadows that the unexplainable and inexpressable is found. With soft eyes we can see what is hidden by shadow and find there reverance, respect, and perhaps the very heart of Love.

     I suspect that most who come to these pages are the quiet heroes, working tireless in the shadows. We don't hear your voice because you speak in sweet whispers, and you stand like the rose on my window sill just visible behind the curtain. But we feel your pulse because Love's pulse beats in the heart we share. Wherever you are, we celebrate you, in the shadow and the gentle folds of light - heroes bearing the sacred work of radical, loving care.