Clinical Pastoral Education

The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy  Chaplaincy Alive! podcast: A discussion with Kenneth Blank, a responding chaplain to the Oklahoma City Bombing Twenty years ago, a truck bomb went off outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds.  CPSP Chaplain Kenneth Blank talks with Chaplaincy Alive! podcast host, Susan McDougal, about the day of the bombing and the days following that historic event, and discusses how it impacted his life, and the lives of his fellow-chaplains, and the lives of the people living in Oklahoma City. In his interview with Susan McDougall, Ken Blank mentions a paper he wrote, "Pastoral Care and Response to Disaster - The Oklahoma City Experience", and readers can download the paper by clicking HERE   Visit The Pastoral Report The Online Newsletter of The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy   

At End of Life, Family Often Too Optimistic on Survival Educating a family about a poor prognosis has always been difficult. Now a study appearing in the  Journal of the American Medical Association  reveals the extent of misunderstanding when patients and physicians both try predict the chance of a loved one's survival. In this 150-second analysis,  MedPage Today  clinical reviewer F. Perry Wilson MD, MSCE, breaks down the data.

There has been an increasing trend in the pastoral care movement to move away from chaplaincy and pastoral care in favor of promoting and providing "spiritual care." Many hospital departments have changed their names to reflect this shift in philosophy and practice. Spirituality circumvents religion and promotes chaplaincy as a generic practice. Religions are messy. They have rules, doctrines, beliefs, ethics---some of which are flawed to be sure. But religions usually stand for something. Spirituality is an amorphous thing, an oblong blur, with implications of cosmic connection, but with no price tag---no demands no dogmas, and no ethics. Not even a dogma demanding justice and mercy. The only perceptible doctrine promoted by the spirituality movement is that people should feel good about themselves. At its best the clinical pastoral movement teaches religious professionals to be available to everyone. It also teaches them to be critical of all religion---but dismissive ...

Feeling Felt – Challenges for Pastoral Care and Counselling The 13th Conference of the European Council for Pastoral Care and Counselling It all begins with a look. The paintings by the artist Maria Wolfram challenge the way we look at the world surrounding us. Those faces seem to look back at us, asking: What do you see when you look at me? Can you feel my reality, or are you looking right through me, perceiving only what you wish to see, receiving only what fits in your picture? Feeling felt – two simple words that capture the essence of empathic attunement, which is at the core of all encountering in pastoral care and counselling. How do we approach today’s evermore complex and challenging realities, whose faces do we recognize and encounter? And where do we find strength in our effort to accompany suffering individuals and communities under pressure? What is the essence of being a pastoral caregiver for our present time in the perspective of feeling felt? These...

CLINICAL PASTORAL EDUCATION Asbury Theological Seminary  Find a certified ACPE (Association for Clinical Pastoral Education) or CPSP (College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy) training site.  ACPE website has a  list of certified training sites by states .  CPSP website has a  list of certified training sites .  (NOTE: Your denominational body usually defines which of the above training programs they prefer.) See  ACPE  or  CPSP  webpage for more information on each respective program. Apply directly to the ACPE or CPSP sites you are interested in training.  Both  ACPE  and  CPSP  website have application forms you can access. Your training site may also provide you with the application as well. ACPE and CPSP training sites may require you to pay a tuition fee to train with them. You are responsible for paying for your CPE training.  The seminary will reimburse you up to ...

The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy CPSP is an international, theologically based covenant community. CPSP was formed out of the memories of our own experience in clinical training. It was not formed around the corporate bureaucratic model, that by its very nature smothers criticism with public relations and undermines collegiality by promoting patterns of domination and submission. We remembered the redemptive process of our own clinical training, an experience that was marked by deep criticism and deep respect and care, an experience that we would never demean or trivialize by calling it skill training. We experienced our own clinical pastoral process as transformative. We sought in creating CPSP to rekindle the transformative process that seemed to be diminishing in our professional lives. We constructed the Chapter model out of our memories of the clinical training group as the best hope for fostering continuing transformation, individually and corporately. ...

Sometime ago Don Berwick, MD spoke about 20 improvements that doctors could make in the end of life care of their patients that begins in a simple conversation. Berwick recommended the following considerations as his top three suggestions: Ask yourself as you see patients, "Would I be surprised if this patient died in the next few months?" For those "sick enough to die," prioritize the patient's concerns - often symptom relief, family support, continuity, advance planning, or spirituality. To eliminate anxiety and fear, chronically ill patients must understand what is likely to happen. When you see a patient who is "sick enough to die" - tell the patient, and start counseling and planning around that possibility. To understand your patients, ask (1) "What do you hope for, as you live with this condition,"(a) "What do you fear?," (b) It is usually hard to know when death is close. If you were to die soon, what would be left u...

Clinical Pastoral Education - An Historical Perspective: In the 1920’s theological education began to be profoundly reshaped by the medical model of education which itself was being transformed in response to the renowned Flexner Report of 1910. Theological education, which was at that point in history almost entirely academic, theoretical, and forensic began to change just as medical education was changing. Pastors began using the mentorship approach to learning “at the bedside” in contact with living persons and their problems. Thus, began the art and science of Clinical Pastoral Training or Education, the disciplined examination of specific cases of pastoral care and counseling, and the application of the clinical method to the work of ministry. Clinical Pastoral Education has come to be known as the study of persons and their problems of relating and structures of meaning. This training has become accepted as a formative component in the preparation of persons for religious...

The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy Committed to Continuing Accountability, Standards of Excellence, and Diversity of Opportunity The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy promotes competency and accountability through an ongoing process of peer review which is a central aspect of our covenant relationship and Chapter life. CPSP is unique among the national pastoral training and certifying organizations in that it is a covenant community. Within Chapter life, CPSP members covenant together to being held mutually responsible to one another for their ongoing professional development and direction. Credential’s held by CPSP members are renewed annually and contingent upon satisfactory participation in Chapter life and the Chapter's recommendation for renewal. CPSP understands its task to be first and foremost theological and that ongoing peer review is centered in the CPSP covenant. Believing that life is best lived by grace, the CPSP communit...