MY OWN EVALUATION

FINAL EVALUATION        APRIL 2015  Karen Gruber      CPE UNIT TWO            New York-Presbyterian  

Self Awareness

In order to properly reflect on this CPE unit, i have taken some time to read through my learning goals, my mid unit evaluation, notes on my peer critique and notes on my supervisors critique. I have taken a moment to read through my verbatim of this Unit, My verbatim of my first unit and also taken some time to reflect on critique i have received from both my peers as well as supervisors old and present.

My pastoral and personal identity have lines that aren't as defined as they were when i entered  my first unit . I have embodied the compassions that i once brought along with me in desire and need to give them, i have merged them in myself as one.

So in this sense the model of CPE has turned itself inward as so many of the competencies i have learned have ALSO been learned through needing to apply compassion in my own life, that entered metical crisis,  . It brought forth a deep sense of community and a deep sense of Chaplaincy being the person i am, and still becoming. a sense that we are all a community and this hospital is a central place where we gather for hope, love, meaning and connection. It is also a place where patients are in some pretty bad situations, and it just stinks sometimes for some of these patients their pain and suffering. I will leave units were patients will still reside. How can i not hold them in my heart, even while i journey to embody these new learning's, in a healthy personal life, study my theology and return to CPE with a deeper well to draw from.?

My theology , in this sense, has become more complete as i visit the sick , feed the poor, and through the gospels of Christ, i feel into my prayers for the relief of suffering.

In my mid unit evaluation, i spoke about chaplaincy grounding me, I spoke about this offering through this work making me a better person in my life. This remains true. I also hear how major life events have gotten in the way and in the space and in the time of this work, and yet these events has deepened for me work i am yet to do. 

I have come together in the compassion of the being that I am my role as Chaplain Intern, in life, in New York City every day, , Church on Sunday, to the Homeless on Wednesday, to the sick and grieving in my schools and community,  , to my kids nannies and parents, , and in prayer , every moment as i open my heart to another as Father Keating quotes " Go to your room, close the door and prayer to your father,", Being in CPE open the place in me which can meet those in the hospital setting and pray for them, with them, to them and cultivate the skills to do so in an interfaith setting.

I don't fail at anything, and yet this unit has caused me to come to terms  with  not being able to do everything.., with opening to the compassion i so want to give, in giving such to myself. In giving myself the space i need to live thy will be done, and stay in the moment, with life's lessons and small victories.
I write this final evaluation knowing i will get my BCC, i will Finish 4 full unites of CPE and i will finish my college education towards a master of divinity.  Today i am 48 years old, with six young children and a husband I care deeply for who is facing his illness' and asking us to all face what it has caused to us in lost

years, in pain. I look forward to 2015 working in my church, taking classes on line, lectures, workshops, volunteering, being class mom for my lower scholar, settling my first born into college, my second son find in his college, an 11 year old pubescent girl find herself,  a 13 year old entering a new high school downtown and a 15 year old making his way to the Olympic trials.

With the integration of my  personal identity and my pastoral identity being more developed after this unit it would seem only the most natural of evolutions to step into role of caregiver back in MY hospital/house and be available to reflect bedside for those in need around me, right now. This year off of CPE formal training i believe will  add enrichment to my life and allow we to walk back into the full time role as a hospital chaplain-intern ,with more education in my theology, and more grounding in myself.

I feel one of my strongest CPE competence s is also one of the most practical for a hospital setting. I get along extremely well with people in a working environment, community setting. I respect boundaries and i can bring warmth and inclusion and listening. I can use my pastoral identity as well as my personality to establish a safe, non threatening visiting professional who can be part of the care team of the unit as well as lend a listening ear and an inspiration for the work and the life we share in the moment.  It is not a surprise that i get stopped around the area by hospital workers and it is not a surprise as i remember exactly who they are !

EVALUATION OF MY clinical methods of learning:

While we all have within us a higher power that calls us here. That says, come and visit me, see me, pray with me. Faith, hope , meaning, and connection come together , in the soul of who we all are. And i don't want to say soul and mean Christian, i want to say sole and mean being.  This unit my clinical use of words in a verbatim were tweaked a bit and i came face to face with cultural competencies. While both my supervisor and i were able to point out and receive this growth edge in my clinical ability to report, i felt held and understood that the learning was in a naiveté and not in a alternation of views.  My clinical methods included learning about servicing patients who were in a great deal of pain when my pastoral visit was upon them. I was providing a guided imagery for a patient who wanted some help in relaxing because she was in pain, and eventually it became evident to address the pain with the staff i felt a part of in my unit 6C.

While most of my time was spend on 6C, i feel a great growth in the Emergency room. As i would walk through the lobby and open the ERC area door, there was Reginald to  greet me with a warm smile and talk about whether he stayed at his house in the Poconos and with him mom in New York. In the emergency room i walked in with the opener of how long this patient was in the ER. Before someone was cleaned up and sent upstairs in the ER, you can see on them the wares of the story and i felt my heart would open intensely  to the sick and the poor or the rich and the lonely. . I feel like the emergency room visits were a sort of grounding to be present to every A  AND B  bed i could when i went to my assigned unit.

My relationship with my unit and nurses, and PA, and therapists, food service staff, cleaners, one on ones, receptionists on my units and throughout the hospital made it a warm and loving environment to come and attend to. I was trusted with the code to the supply closet and the staff bathroom on the floor. I was invited to rooms where patients could use "some extra support" or "someone to visit them".

I was a welcomed break for the one and ones who were mostly the same on our floor. I would ear patients say to their one on ones after our visit a kind word or two and i guess they built up and we became a sort of community. Ash Wednesday when i would place ashes on the nurses and staff on my unit and say a prayer with them. Blessing.  I would hear the comments patients would make as i would purell my hands within the room to the One on One, "what a nice chaplain women." i would smile and walk away. Able to hear in my heart the sweetness of the patients and what he felt in the moment.  So many patients in the hospital who are grateful for so many others, Who pray for others on the side of the curtain which is not theirs, but has a life not unlike their own.

I was taught this CPE unit how personal experiences are used to work with for Pastoral Care. In the same case i relate to how grateful so many in the hospitals for the sickness they have and not the one on the other side of the curtain. So many times we pray for them. Not unlike the story i unfold for myself here. Maybe that is why i WAS able to get into the boat of so many.

So we are all called here to serve, and as i come to the hospital to serve last year in my CPE unit, serve i did. Three days of offerings, on call at nights, and paper writing, opened my heart to be able to offer what inside me was most needing to share. Love, Hope, Faith, meaning and connection.  This unit my personal life had in it illness, which caused me to retreat. I retreated into a sort of dome where i needed to protect my children, my well being , my community, and my home from the darkness's of the outside world.  I was quite threatened in my own life, similar to those who were patients in the unit i was visiting and verbattiming about who were threatened in theirs.

I recognized that i could not hold as much of another's pain and suffering while i was full holding my own . I  created  a mantra,  I would be able to draw from my pain and experiences and open to the pain and experiences of another so that through compassionate questions what weren't afraid to ask,, through the space i offered to hold the words spoken, awareness and understanding I was able to hold  that pain with them.

 While this i feel is a great strength and related competence(309.4), i also feel there is a learning that within me, i was able to feel compassion also for myself and i also needed space which is why i finish with a half unit and not the full unit.

 While this is a small failure, is it really ? Outwardly more, inwardly its a small breathe of release that i could only do so much right. I feel love. The love of god in this moment of hope, meaning and connection, that i either want to lay my hand on this patient and pray with them or i can chaplain to them by just loving them, as god loves them and that i do with in me.  In this statement is another CPE competency (309..6). Understanding that in my theology, in my Christian beliefs, i follow the light that shines in the being present to visit the sick, that the visit is enough if the sick can actually be visited and heard and chaplain to without creating any more pain.  Later  I found a balance that allowed me to be fully in offering, without this mantra. Just another human being to another. I felt this  mantra created judgment that needn't be there,

 I would miss days of work to be present to my children, in a way maybe mother and father together make up for, and this took more time then i could have ever imgined.It wasnt the class trip that i just went on to be present, it was the staying home from school one day and going on special time trips and taking kids to therapists and filling their sadness sand their fear that their family is falling apart with love. And that was part of my chaplaincy  this year too. There just  that wasn't enough hours in these 8 months to complete both tasks.

I feel the deepest personal growth i can reach for myself is to recognize i was grown up enough to give myself compassion and NOT do a disservice to another or worse my family.

My theology taught me to be both Mary and Martha when needing to be.  I have evolved enough to recognize that as an over achiever who achieves everything i , too, lay there on my bed, which i make and i don't make for myself. Which i , too , cry out to god, in every faith, for love, hope, meaning of illness and grief and pain and relief of suffering.

Let me learn to live day by day,in the moment, doing the best that i can. Part of the person i am is a chaplain. I will finish what is necessary to get certified and to dedicate my life to learning all that CPE is there to teach and offering that in Pastoral care. My pastoral identity is to become the growth of who i am.

I vow to return to complete this unit when i have integrated whatever might come from this illness that has brought on pain, loss and grief and carry it into my work as a new edge to deepen my love, hope, faith and connection o offer  with another.

EVALUATION OF MINISTRY TO PATIENTS:   My strength in ministry to my patients includes the tools that i carried into each room. I would enter the room and warmly attend to empathetic listening mirroring my tone and the tone of the room, or my steps and the softness needed i that room. I would use my coaching skills to listen as well as to offer emotional and spiritual support by exploring needs and values, envisioning the future, if need be with a magic wand, expanding the view when it seems needed for people returning home, and embracing the sadness and richness of the moment and predicament we were in, somehow in this moment together.

one of my greatest strengths in reflective listening. This isn't done via a simple repeating back what you heard. It repeating it back in such a way that the listener can hear that you not just heard the story but have attacked an emotion with oneself that can feel the story back, and Both patient and chaplain can shake their heads in unison.

My weakness is meeting someone's anger in the place of angry. Yes, i hear that you are angry. You can be angry now. Be angry, Tell me more angry and i need to lose the agenda that i sometimes carry to want to move that angry to love, even if i just want to love that person who is angry i meet them with love and not my own anger. I will work on this in my next unit of CPE .

My weakness is feeling my own anger. Maybe even finding my anger.  i hear my supervisor bring me to terms to recognize this. Who do i hate? really I can't name one, chalk it up to part of why i am here and not out with ladies who lunch.

Anger, as a driving force? yes i can understand this? i can understand it in someone's theology? Can they be angry at god? Can  they be an atheist, can they turn from their religion and their faith, any faith they hold and be angry for their situation, their sickness, their loss, their grief.