Senior Staff Chaplain - Palliative Care

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago provides superior pediatric care in a setting that offers the latest benefits and innovations in medical technology, research and family-friendly design. As the largest pediatric provider in the region with a 140-year legacy of excellence, kids and their families are at the center of all we do. Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is ranked in all 10 specialties by the U.S. News & World Report.

Location

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago

Job Description

• Serves as a resource person to spiritual care staff.  May collaborate in the orientation and clinical mentoring of new spiritual care staff and students and contribute content to performance appraisal process.  

• Provides initiative and leadership for departmental projects/programs, including quality improvement or other related initiative related to service and systems improvement.  Serves on hospital-wide committees or projects.

• Collaborates to coordinate service delivery with families and appropriate team members across the continuum. Makes necessary referrals to other team members and/or community resources.  Makes spiritual care rounds and visits in assigned clinical areas.  Attends patient care rounds in assigned areas.  

• Identifies, assesses, and responds to child/family needs; includes in this process (identification, assessment, response) age-specific developmental needs, psychosocial needs, cultural needs, and spiritual needs.  Particularly focuses on the emotional and spiritual needs of patients and families.  These needs may include but are not limited to:  assistance in coping with illness, spiritual/religious resources; ritual/worship; communication with staff regarding spiritual/cultural needs and practices; support in times of special stress or crisis;  grief support; and linkage with own religious group or spiritual tradition.  Includes the planning and leading of worship or other special services, including memorial services, in the hospital and elsewhere. 

• Develops relationships with families that are caring, trusting, reliable, and beneficial.   Utilizes these relationships in providing appropriate spiritual care. 

• Provides timely and effective intervention for patients and families in emergency/crisis situations such as codes, traumas, deterioration of patent’s health status, as well as other situations deemed emergent by the patient, family, or healthcare team.  Offers emotional, spiritual, and grief support to the families of dying and deceased patients and assists these families with necessary hospital protocols.

• Documents in a thorough and timely manner in accordance with professional standards (see assessment/documentation policies).

• Communicates with members of the health care team, through formal and informal means of transmitting information, in order to provide optimal care of patients and families.  Communicates through both conveying and responding to pertinent information.  Informs health care team of the role of faith community and/or other factors impacting the spiritual and emotional status of a patient and family.  Maintains relationships that facilitate teamwork and referrals. Provides care for members of the health care team in developing resiliency and in addressing spiritual/emotional distress. Serves as professional liaison with assigned teams.

• Responds to the spiritual/psychosocial needs of staff who have experienced trauma/stress/losses in the performance of their job duties. Responds to requests for debriefings/staff support across the organization.

• Advocates for and addresses the spiritual/psychosocial/developmental needs of the child and family throughout the continuum of care.  Participates regularly in the health care team’s interdisciplinary rounds. 

• Participates in the team's group problem-solving and program planning.

• Provides leadership for the team in the delivery of family services, particularly spiritual care.   Advocates for the effective utilization of Family Services.  Leads the team and other family service professionals in establishing family services goals for team care delivery.