Catholic Health East
Best Practice Narrative RHC: Pittsburgh Mercy Health System
1400 Locust Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
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Category:
New Delivery Models Contact: Joy Conti
Title: Manager, Parish Nurse Program
E-mail: jconti@mercy.pmhs.org
Fax: (412) 232-7180
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Description of the Best Practice: Parish Nurse and Health
Ministries Program
Parish Nurse and Health Ministries are relatively new concepts in
hospital-community relationships. With a focus on individual wellness with a
spiritual dimension, Mercy Hospital's program has grown significantly over the
past 7 years and now encompasses several different models of parish nursing.
Implementation
The Pittsburgh Mercy Health System program employs several different models of
parish nursing/health ministry.
- It has a salaried field staff of four nurses working full-time and
part-time directly within six parishes. Mercy employs these nurses, provides
supervision, training and support.
- Twenty other parishes are served by volunteer parish nurses who completed a
training program conducted by Mercy Hospital over a two year period.
- Mercy serves additional parishes throughout the Western Pennsylvania region
through a yearly symposium (150 persons annually); quarterly volunteer health
ministry gatherings (20 persons each meeting); individual consultation; and
maintenance of resource files for nurses and congregations.
- A fourth model is System Parish Nursing involving two salaried parish
nurses rounding with the hospital's discharge planning teams each week to
identify individuals needing parish nurse visits at home. The special community
experience and knowledge the parish nurse brings to the conferences has
benefited the overall discharge planning program. This program also provides
practicums for nursing and medical students and the hospital's residents.
A current product development effort provides volunteer parish nurses crucial
assistance through what are called "boxed" programs, or programs that
can easily be replicated, but also easily modified for the particular needs of
each parish. Three programs, each developed by Mercy have been boxed to date.
They are "Woman to Woman", FIT NB FREE and ROSEBUD. In all of these
programs a wholistic approach is taken emphasizing physical, social and
spiritual needs. This can mean encouraging meditation with walking, having
prayer before discussion, using music for inspiration or other steps. Following
health promotion principles, all development of the programs must begin from
within the parish. Time Frame
The Mercy Parish Nurse Program began in 1991 providing support to a single
parish and has growth steadily with the introduction of the new forms and
models of parish nursing delivery.
Financial Profile
The Parish Nurse Program represents a community outreach program directed at
improving community wellness at the parish level. Funded primarily by The Mercy
Hospital of Pittsburgh this program is also supplemented by several
demonstration grants from various sources.
Outcome
In programs focused on community wellness, empirical measurement of changes in
health wellness levels is difficult and time consuming. Significant interest
and support, however, has been demonstrated within the Western Pennsylvania
region as evidenced by the growth in the number of parishes participating and
growth in the number of volunteer nurses participating.
Best Practice Narrative is limited to a one page summary.
Supporting data is limited to one page.
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