CPE: an educational experience in so many ways
Now that CPE has come to an end, I can finally start to look back with an open mind. Here are some statistics from my summer as a chaplain:
I completed over 300 patient visits and attempted roughly 80 other patient visits.
I attended to 26 traumas: 9 falls, 7 stabs, 5 motor vehicle accidents, 3 gunshot wounds, 1 burn, 1 transfer, and 1 assault. I also conducted 19 trauma follow up visits.
I responded to 36 rapid response team pages and 15 RRT follow-ups, 13 stroke alerts and lots of stroke follow-ups, 9 spinal cord injuries, and 10 code blues.
I was privileged to attend 3 family meetings, 10 staff meetings, and 18 interdisciplinary rounds meetings. I also hosted 4 spirituality groups in the psych wards.
Reflecting back there are quite a few things I learned, some funny, some serious, but all important:
- Active code blue chest compressions are terrifying
- GSW (gunshot wound) is not always a death sentence
- People with tracheas can more than often talk
- But, freshly installed tracheas are really hard to look at
- Comfort care is a nice way of saying “we are going to watch you until you die, but you’ll be comfortable”
- Sometimes showing, expressing, and sharing patient and family emotions can be more beneficial to building the relationship than trying to hide them. (IE - cry with them)
- What do we really mean by “I have to be strong”? It’s almost more of a coverup or cop out so we don’t have to be vulnerable
- Never tell someone to calm down, and never play into their “what if” scenarios, it will make things worse
- Medical staff needs pastoral care almost as much, or sometimes more than, patients
- Often, the encounters I walked out of thinking I did nothing, were the most fruitful and helpful to those who needed it
- Don’t assume everyone in the psych ward is crazy. Most of them. But not all of them
- Horrifying can also be accompanied by holy: I was welcomed into places of vulnerability, to sit with patients and support them through difficult times. I did not have to be there, I was not a nurse or doctor, patients could turn me away, but I wasn’t; I was welcomed in.
There’s so much more that I learned during my time in CPE and I’m slowly working through processing and writing. Thank you for all your support, love, wisdom, and guidance through this process.
(Photo of the visits I completed during my last overnight August 17-18th and last day shift on August 19th)
