Book Reviews
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Parish Nursing
Stories of Service and Care
Verna Benner Carson and Harold G. Koenig
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Scientific and Medical Network, The - Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
3/20/2004
Parish nursing is a relatively recent development in the US arising out of the coming together of faith and health concerns partly in response to the growing inadequacy of the US healthcare system. The book describes the origins of the movement with illustrative stories of practitioners as well as theoretical models and suggestions for establishing a parish nurse programme. Will be of interest principally to those working in pastoral care.
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Catholic Library World - Haverford, PA - Vol 74 no1
9/1/2003
A newer ministry on the parish scene has been the recruitment of nursing care
specialists to plan and implement pastoral programs to serve the health needs
of all parishioners, especially the hospitalized, recently hospitalized and
permanently home-bound. The program of care varies widely across the nation,
but the trend
to recruit professional staff, whether volunteer, part-time, local or regional,
is widespread and growing rapidly. Nurses help pastors keep up with the changes
in the health professions, with strategies of care and healing, and offer assistance
in the overwhelming task of visiting the sick. Medical technology, prices,
insurance, counseling trends, social services—these are areas in which the professional
health care workers can "bridge the gap" for the church staff.
Some amazing stories are told here in which parishes interacted with people
in need. Models for setting up programs tailored to the needs of individual
congregations
are discussed. The authors successfully blend serious material with searing
tales of pathos, and some miracles! Highly recommended for parish staffs,
diocesan staffs, hospital staffs. Appendices on pages 147-231 contain a classified
bibliography
of resources for many nursing specialties, sample surveys and assessment
tools; a sample healing service; extensive footnotes; parish nursing curricula;
and
an index.
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American Journal of Nursing
1/1/2003
Awarded American Journal of Nursing’s Book of the Year in the category
of nursing education and continuing education.
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Advance For Nurses - Maryland/Virginia/DC
12/1/2002
In the preface to Parish Nursing: Stories of Service and Care, the authors state, "We hope that this book honors parish nurses and serves as an encouragement to other nurses to respond to the gentle ’God-nudge’ they may be feeling. We hope too that the book inspires church members and leaders as well as health-care providers and administrators to explore the values and benefits of parish nursing within their own faith traditions and to the health-care system at large."
For those who are now practicing in the field of parish nursing, it will be a wonderful affirmation of the impact parish nursing has both on the practitioner and the client. For those who have been thinking about entering the role, it will offer wonderful stories of those who have gone before, blazing a trail in a new nursing specialty.
Most of the book is written in the first person, quoting nurses who willingly shared their stories. They tell of their "call to ministry," trials and errors, education for the role, successes, and times of frustration and seeming failure. It takes us out of the "how to" style of previous books on this topic and gently leads unto the real world of the parish nurse. The style of writing is both engaging and easy to read.
Of special value are the four appendices at the end, which offer resources including information on curricula, where parish nurses can find support, survey and assessment tools, and sample liturgies. The sources section reads like a Who’s Who of parish nursing. Sources are from all geographic regions, covering many viewpoints, lending the text a balance lacking in many previous works. Nurses, educators and clergy each offer their unique perspective.
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Choice
10/1/2002
Before there were word processors, computers, and voice mail, there were stories.
Carson (formerly Univ. of Maryland) and Koenig (Duke Univ.) tell the stories
of parish nurses as they carved out a new specialty in professional nursing.
In 1980, the Reverend Granger Westburg "rediscovered" church-based
nursing. Partnering with Lutheran General Hospital in Chicago, Westburg established
the specialty of "parish nursing" as a ministry rooted in Christian
faith. Parish nursing currently enjoys an intense popularity within faith communities.
The book describes how nurses of all faiths are "called" to the
work, how they feel about their work, and what they think about their work.
The stories are genuine, heartfelt, and realistic. The authors also describe
different models of parish nursing, identify the methods necessary to establish
a parish nursing practice, and suggest a "parish nursing curriculum."
In addition, the book offers a plethora of resources for parish nursing; offers
scholarly documentation for each chapter; and includes an annotated bibliography.
An interesting work with enormous potential for utility. General readers; lower-division
undergraduates through graduate students; two-year technical program students.
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Nurses – Pennsylvania
10/1/2002
Parish Nursing has been selected for the 2002 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in the category, “Nursing Education & Continuing Education.”
The award-winning book shows how parish nursing is expanding and supplementing today’s overburdened healthcare system, and offers a guide for preparing to become a parish nurse. Authors Verna Benner Carson and Harold G. Koenig describe the cadre of nurses who are redefining traditional nursing by keeping alive its early Judeo-Christian roots: to care about and for the whole person. The mission for parish nurses is to integrate attention to physical needs with consideration of emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual needs.
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Journal of Christian Nursing
7/1/2002
The book begins by asking how parish nurses first sensed a call to somehow connect their nursing and their faith. Most of the nurses express a strong passion about their ministry and talk about how they often stumbled into what they see as a dream job. Most saw it as a direct call from God, or at least the fulfillment of a long-held desire to express their faith through nursing. Parish nursing seemed to fill that need.
The appendices provide a wealth of parish nursing resources, including outlines of parish nursing curricula, professional associations, publications, conferences and courses, funding sources, assessment tools and a sample healing service.
Although this book won&srquo;t give you all the details you need to get started in parish nursing, it will certainly inspire and inform you about the heart of this movement. It serves as an appetizer to whet your appetite for the main course. It would be an excellent book to give to a pastor or governing board of a congregation when introducing the idea of parish nursing to them.
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Science & Spirit Magazine
5/30/2002
This book is a must-read for any nurse contemplating parish nursing. And a
more general audience may benefit, considering the great value parish nurses
(PNs) provide at a time when health care is powered by technology, only partially
effective, and a prohibitory expanse for many. Indeed, authors V.B. Carson and
H.G. Koenig intend to educate health professionals, laity, and clergy about
this approach to inexpensive, community-based, holistic health care.
Stories about the struggles and joys of parish nursing, the call to parish
nursing, how PNs care for their communities, starting a PN program, and the
future of parish nursing are supplemented by richly informative appendices.
A quarter of the book is devoted to such practical information as curriculum
content for PN training programs, samples of survey tools, and an example of
a healing service.
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Library Journal
5/15/2002
Parish nursing, a church-based form of care that focuses on the whole person
- spiritually and emotionally as well as physically - has recently witnessed
a revival as the population over 65 grows and the need for healthcare in a long-term
setting increases. Hoping to inspire both nurses and lay readers to explore
the link between increased religious activity and better health, Carson, national
director of behavioral health at Tender Loving Care-Staff Builders Home Health,
and Koenig, founder and director of Duke University Center for the Study of
Religion/Spirituality and Health, present interviews with nurses who practice
this form of care. Although the work focuses on nursing within a particular
Christian congregation, it includes contributions from a few non-Christian practitioners.
The historical foundations and various models of parish nursing are also reviewed,
and appendixes cover tips on establishing a program, an appropriate curriculum,
relevant associations, resources, assessment tools, and a sample healing service.
The endnotes provide current contacts, and a list of annotated references, all
published within the last decade, is also appended. Though the topic is fairly
specialized, this practical and illustrative book will be useful in public libraries
and nursing school collections.
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Long Island, New York Newsday
5/11/2002
Most nurses involved in a congregational health ministry plan a journey that focuses their energies on a specific church. As with any journey…the traveler needs to know what to pack; she needs to know about the terrain; she needs to know what personal resources are required; and she needs to know the expected time of arrival. As nurses reflect on whether or not they are called to parish nursing, they embark on a similar process of preparation. They pack their nursing knowledge and skills along with a deep commitment that they are responding to God’s call. The take stock of the "lay of the land" of their own church, deciding whether the terrain is friendly or hostile toward health ministry. Beyond their nursing expertise they reflect on the personal resources that are required, such as infinite patience, excellent communication and negotiation skills, ability to work with groups, knowledge of Scripture and the faith statements of their own denomination, and the ability to draw the best from others.
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Catholic Studies
1/1/2002
If you are thinking of becoming a parish nurse or thinking of established a
parish nurse in your parish or advising students who are seeking a career focus,
this book will be of interest to you. The sub-title tells it well: Stories
of Service and Care.
This is an absorbing assembly of recollections of established parish nurses.
It begins with a) their decision to move from conventional hospital nursing
into parish nursing, moves to b) their first experiences in that role, then
to c) their reflections on their experiences with the church, and then to d)
their experiences as they relate to the wider community beyond the parish. A
subsequent chapter presents various models of parish nursing, continuing to
use the words and experiences of nurses in the different styles. The final chapter
offers a look to the future and the authors’ hopes for this very young and fluid
specialty.
The early chapters read almost like a religious tract as the authors and the
nurses tell their stories of becoming parish nurses as testimony of their "call
to ministry." The authors and the nurses who are telling their story testify
to their "call." Apparently no one has asked whether becoming a nurse
was itself a response to God’s "call." But do not let such a question
distract you from reading this book. The stories are important and certainly
apply to all denominations.
The descriptions of the activity of parish nurses are full of ministry that
is religious but include little of action that is distinctly nursing; i.e.,
specifically calling on the expertise of nurses in serving the unwell. This
leaves the reader with a question. Does the concept join faith and medicine
in healing as well as faith and medicine in dying? Does it separate or keep
separate medicine and faith or does it bring them together? Although there is
repeated reference to being "wholistic", (that is, concerned with
body, mind and spirit), the emphasis seems to be only on ministry. It does not
refer to the combination of physical and spiritual, which is so significant
in the palliative care concept of nursing for the terminally ill. Perhaps this
is only the early stage of parish nursing experience. Further study may connect
the two.
These are rather new and important concepts in the field of nursing and in
parish structure and function. As with any new idea there will be many changes
with time and experience.
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