Partners In Care – Nurses Christian Fellowship International World Conference

CNM Delegation - L to R Rose Ball, Tim James, Liz Capper, Steve Fouch and Sue Allen

Try imagining what 300 voices singing and praying in dozens of different language sounds like.  Beautiful and strange, but it is, I think, a faint foreshadowing of what it will be like in eternity when ever tribe nation and tongue will gather before the throne of God. But that was what we experienced in the worship at the NCFI International Conference at the start of November.

Some three hundred nurses from over twenty countries attended the first International Christian nursing conference that NCFI has ever held in Latin America, including delegations from Spain, Nigeria, South Korea, Australia, Canada, the US, Norway, Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay.  There were at least seven delegates from the UK – two from Nurses Christian Fellowship Scotland (NCFS) and five from Christian Nurses & Midwives (CNM is the member body of NCFI for England and Wales).

The opening evening set a very strong note for the conference, with the Chilean Minister of Health speaking passionately about the role of faith in Jesus in the best of healthcare, and that his government has put the right to good spiritual care into national law!  Patricia Bennar followed with a scholarly look at the Biblical idea of the ‘Compassionate Stranger’ as exemplified in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Both the carer and the cared for in this parable are outsiders – but with which do we identify ourselves?

The theme was ‘Partners in Care’, and we looked each day at themes ‘Partnering with God’, ‘Partnering with Patients and Families’ and ‘Partnering to Change the World’.  Each day started with a Biblical exposition from Raquel Contreras (a Chilean pastor who ministers in the USA), and a professional session that looked at how these scriptural truths impact upon our professional practice.

There were two training tracks in the concurrent sessions – one on Leadership and one on Teaching Spiritual Care.  Both training programmes are geared at giving a distinctly Christian approach to developing the next generation of nurse leaders and equipping nurses to give competent spiritual care to their patients.  We are looking at how we can develop these further for members of CNM.

NCFI presented its Eight Year strategic plan from 2013-2021, and a new structure to take this forward. This includes the development of an Institute of Christian Nursing under NCFI that will develop professional development programmes for nurses and midwives with a strong Christian and professional ethos.  The first two resources are the leadership and spiritual care programmes, but these are seen as the starting point only, the idea being to focus on training trainers in regional and national fellowships with the long term vision of equipping Christian nurses around the world to be agents for change in the culture of care in their own nations.

CNM is very involved with the leadership of NCFI – CNM Council member Sue Allen has been developing the leadership training programme as part of the NCFI International Board, and remains on the board as part of the development team for the Institute of Christian Nursing, while Steve Fouch (CNM General Secretary) is European Regional Chair and European regional Board Rep on the International Board.  Former CNM Chair, Liz Capper was also, until very recently, on the UK Trustee Board for NCFI.  We see involvement with the international movement as a vital part of CNM’s ministry – sharing learning and experience and being part of a wider movement to bring a Christian influence and voice into our profession.

But the main joy of these conferences remains the fellowship with other Christian nurses from around the globe, and learning from their struggles and experiences more of what it means to serve Christ in caring for our patients (one of the main themes of the conference, from the opening address by Patricia Bennar to the closing plenary).

The next NCFI European Conference will be October 2014 in Madrid, with a students’ conference on spirituality and care in Lisbon in 2013.  The 2016 World Conference has yet to be confirmed

Nurses Christian Fellowship International Conference Days 4 & 5

Tomorrow we fly home, but what an exciting week we’ve all had!!! We have greatly appreciated the opportunity of being here and would definitely recommend that everyone come along to the Regional NCFI conference in Madrid in 2014, and the next NCFI conference in 2016 (venue tbc!).

This week Tim and Rose have been attending the leadership track, looking at the leader as shepherd, servant, scholar and steward. Dr Sue Allen (UK) and Dr Kamilini Kumar (USA) taught from the Leadership course that they have developed for nurses exploring the essential leadership role from a Christian perspective.

The excursion took place yesterday and was a wonderful time to relax and see some of the sights of Santiago.
The morning Bible studies have continued to be excellent, challenging and inspiring us to be more Christ like in our nursing practice as well as in our daily lives. Today we were looking at John 4v1-7, where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well. The focus was particularly on verse 7 where Jesus asks the woman for a drink as He is thirsty. Focusing on this specific request led us to question how we can serve Christ by meeting the needs of those we come into contact with, in line with the verse from Matthew 25 v 40 “...whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for Me”.

The UK has been represented well by excellent seminars by Jo Caisley, Tony Kemp, Huw Morgan and Steve Fouch. Jo presented on wise and responsible stewardship in healthcare. Tony and Huw represented PRIME speaking on disaster preparedness and partnerships in international medical education. Steve led two seminars, one on writing publications and challenges and opportunities with keeping the faith amongst nurses in the UK. All were well attended and received positive feedback – well done guys!

In addition Steve attended a three part training of trainers programme in teaching spiritual care from a Christian, nursing perspective. This programme has been developed by Amy Rex-Smith (USA), Tove Giske (Norway) and Grace Morillo (Colombia), and has been developed to equip trainers to help student and qualified nurses develop key skills in spiritual assessment, intervention and evaluation. We are already looking at how we might use both the leadership training and spiritual care training with members in the UK

Prof. Barbara Parfitt (Scotland) spoke on the last day on partnering with the world, using the WHO model (of Partnership through relevance, ownership and community engagement), in order to have a positive impact on global healthcare in the name of Christ.

Bishop Hector led us in Holy Communion to close, with a traditional Chilean evangelical call to worship... Who lives?JESUS!
to His name; GLORY!
to His people; VICTORY!

And on that note adios amigos!

Rosanne Ball

NCFI World Conference Day 1

The Chilean Way

TheNurses Christian Fellowship International conference began Tuesday (5thNovember) in Santiago, Chile, and for all of you reading this in the UnitedKingdom...it is hot here in Santiago with wonderful views of the Andes mountainrange.

Despitehaving only been to the Opening Ceremony today, we have already been blown awayby what we have heard and seen. The evening opened with an introduction by DrBarbara White (NCFI President), followed by a procession of the flagsrepresenting 350 delegates from over 30 nations. This reminded us that despiteall our different backgrounds and cultures we all had two things in common:Jesus & Nursing. Wow!

The moststriking part of the ceremony came straight away when Jose Alvear, director andpolitician from the Chilean Ministry of Health spoke of the need "to show Jesus in the midst of illness".This is so evident within Chilean healthcare that a law has recently beenpassed that states that every person has a right to spiritual care. Howmind-blowing is that?! In the UK it is common place to see spiritual care aspart of the nursing care plan for patients. However, it is not mandatory and inour experience is rarely seen being effectively put into practice. But we havejust heard a politician saying how important Jesus is in the midst of spiritualcare and that he recognises the effect of spirituality on patient recovery. WouldJeremy Hunt (Secretary of Health, UK), if he were a Christian, be able topublicly say the same?

Next weheard from Patricia Benner, author of the Novice to Expert, which has provideda model to many nursing institutions, across the world, with a tool to assesscompetency within nursing practice. Patricia spoke to us about the story of theGood Samaritan, challenging us to identify with the Samaritan and also thebeaten man in the pit. The importance of being a compassionate stranger in theimage of Jesus as the healer was very thought provoking as clinicians. Animportant point that Patricia made, which captured our minds was that if a nurse does not care about what thepatient cares about, then a patient will not feel cared for.

It's beena really exciting day...wish you all were here...we can't wait to update you onwhat God does the rest of this week.

Quote ofthe day: "We need to see that we are human beings helping other Human beings".

Written by: Rose Ball (CNM Member) & Tim James (CNMChairman). 

Spiritually Confused Care?

Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, recently spoke of the need to remember the spiritual needs of patients in NHS care – and was promptly accused of bringing back medieval exorcism! In the following week, the Royal College of Nursing published a new online training resource to equip nurses in spiritual care, after a survey of its members two years ago showed that they felt hopelessly ill equipped to deliver a type of care that the majority considered a fundamental part of good nursing.

The GMC and BMA acknowledge the need for spiritual care, but when a seriously ill friend of mine asked the GMC if not receiving spiritual care from his consultant was in some way negligent, they could only give the vaguest of answers, despite the well-researched benefits of doing so.

The National Secular Society continue to campaign for all chaplains to be funded by religious bodies, rather than the NHS, as they do not regard spiritual or religious care (a term they seem to mistakenly use interchangeably) as being a core NHS function.

At the same time, we see a GP reprimanded for talking about Jesus to a patient, a nurse suspended for offering to pray with a patient, and countless other cases where complaints have been brought (invariably by third parties) against a health professional for talking about any issue of faith with patients, even when this has been at the patient’s own behest.

Looking at these stories in summary, you could easily conclude (possibly quite correctly) that when it comes to caring for the spiritual needs of patients, the left hand of the NHS does not know what the right is doing! There is a growing body of evidence that spirituality, faith, religious observance etc, have an impact on health (mostly good, some bad). This body of research is growing, although to be fair, most of it is very local and small scale, so even when done well it is hard to draw too many general conclusions from the findings.

At a conference earlier this month in Amsterdam we discussed these issues at length as they relate to the training and education of nurses. One of the key points was that there is a need for multi-centre studies across countries and religious and secular world views to try and get away from small scale local studies. One early multi-centre study identified that those nurses and midwives with a clear faith or belief system were the ones most willing and able to give spiritual care. While this is unsurprising, it is a nostrum that is now backed up by hard evidence from a study across centres in Wales, Netherlands, Norway and Malta.

Furthermore, spirituality is not singular – it is different for different communities and individuals. The spiritual care of a British agnostic is a different matter to that given to a French Muslim or a Maltese Catholic. And this also highlights that spiritual care (broadly speaking attending to the need for meaning, significance, purpose, hope and connection) is different from caring for religious needs (e.g. maintaining a relationship with God through prayer, religious services, reading scriptures, etc.), even if the latter may help those of faith address the former.

For Christians working in healthcare, our faith has always informed our understanding of the spiritual needs of our patients. It requires us to show compassion, and an awareness of the deepest needs of other suffering human beings. We need to have a spiritual attentiveness to, and presence with, our patients as well as a readiness to speak gently and respectfully of the faith that we have within us if asked. And we should be able to provide such care without fear.

In the UK, only Scotland and Wales have produced any standards or guidelines for good practice in spiritual care in the NHS, but in England there is not even a move in that direction. It may be a coincidence that almost every single case of a doctor or nurse facing disciplinary cases for talking about faith and spiritual issues with a patient has been in England. But I doubt it. Until the NHS in England starts taking this seriously, the current confusion in spiritual care will continue.

More training, more research, better guidelines, all will probably help, but I suspect that in a secular culture, which is still unsure of the meaning of ‘spiritual care’, misunderstandings will continue to occur. And, as many recent reports on how poorly we care for people in the NHS have shown, in a health system increasingly obsessed with measurable outcomes, budgetary controls and ‘productivity’, alongside the gradual erosion of the Christian faith from the public sphere, the human dimensions of care – compassion, kindness, the recognition of the spiritual dimensions of our humanity – will inevitably get more and more squeezed to the edges.