ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 21, 1996 TAG: 9610210044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on October 22, 1996.
One of the member churches of the Southwest Roanoke Xhristian
Partnership was listed incorrectly in a story on a cogregational nursing
project Monday. Belmont United Methodist Church is a member of the
partnership. Belmont Baptist Church is not.
A CARILION PROGRAM takes the wisdom and common sense of preventive health care to a relatively new forum - the house of worship.
In the years since religious denominations led the way in building hospitals, many have separated themselves from the provision of health care, registered nurse Betsy Herman says.
Today, however, many hospitals include a chaplain on a patient's health care team to "look at the interplay of spiritual well-being with physical well-being." And some churches are adding nurses to their staffs to address issues of body and soul, Herman said.
Herman is the first of several nurses in a new "congregational nursing" program subsidized by Carilion Health System. It is open to congregations of all religious faiths.
Herman will work out of an office in Belmont Presbyterian Church on Ninth Street Southeast in Roanoke but will serve the Southeast Roanoke Christian Partnership, a consortium of five churches and two Christian social service agencies.
The partnership is contributing to a $3,000 fund to help pay for mileage, office supplies, phones and other incidentals needed to run the office. Belmont Presbyterian, a member of the partnership, is donating the office space.
Carilion will pay the nurse's 30-hour-a-week salary and provide professional liability insurance, continuing education resources and referral resources. Her work will be supervised by Carilion and a partnership advisory committee.
The nursing program "has been a real shot in the arm" for the relatively new partnership, said the Rev. Elliott Hipp, pastor of Belmont Presbyterian. The partnership was formed in May as a way for the members to cooperate in mission work in the community.
In addition to Hipp's church, partnership members are Belmont Christian Church - where Herman was commissioned to her new job in a joint service Sunday afternoon - Belmont Baptist, Waverly Place Baptist, Ninth Street Church of the Brethren, the Presbyterian Community Center and the Rescue Mission of Roanoke.
"In addition to the direct benefits of the program itself," Hipp said, the nursing project helped the "new partners to be more effective more quickly than we would have been without it."
Herman said she will "survey the partnership members to find out what they see as their health needs," but she anticipates that much of her work will be in group settings, providing such services as health-education classes, blood-pressure screenings, and helping organize volunteers to aid the sick and bereaved.
She also will provide counseling and referrals for individuals.
Herman has extensive experience melding a religious mission with a medical one: For 14 years, she was a Southern Baptist missionary in Colombia and Ecuador. She was a nurse to missionary families and to the members of the churches she and her husband served, and she was a liaison between the people and the medical establishment.
She "never saw a division" between her calling to be a nurse and to be a missionary. It was "a vocation where God wanted me to be."
Religious congregations have increasingly been looking at "the whole person." The congregational nursing concept itself goes back many years, to a Lutheran chaplain at a Chicago hospital who wanted to address preventive health issues.
Many congregations have built gyms, sponsored classes on exercise and healthful eating, and held clinics to help smokers quit.
One reason Belmont Presbyterian was chosen for Herman's office is that it has been the site of two-day-a-week clinics run by the Roanoke Health Department for the past 21/2 years. It has a waiting room and a core of volunteers already trained, Hipp said.
Though her office will be in the Presbyterian church, Herman will conduct workshops, screenings and other group activities at other sites so she will be "a presence" at all the participating churches and agencies, Hipp said.
"I won't be in competition with any doctor or clinic or any person already helping families," Herman said. "I see this as an enrichment opportunity, to help families be healthier."
Carilion officials also insist this program, which they hope will spread throughout Western Virginia, is not merely a marketing strategy to attract new customers to the Carilion system.
"We feel a moral obligation to reach out to people in the community in need, to improve the quality of health in our community," said Susan Gring, a registered nurse who is the director of the program for Carilion.
"We honestly do believe that the way to improve the health of a community is through a partnership like congregational nursing," she said.
Nurses in the program will not attempt to steer congregants away from their doctors or other health care providers, she said - although "in those rare cases when the patient has no doctor or other point of access to health care," he or she will be referred to Carilion facilities.
Nurses are already being interviewed for other positions in the Roanoke Valley and at Moneta. Information on the program is available by calling Carilion at 983-4059.
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Betsy Harman, a nurse, speaks Sundayby CNBbefore the congregation of Belmont Christian Church. color.