Clinical Pastoral Education

Today I want to discuss another rite of passage for first year (junior) seminarians: finding a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) site. Virtually every Episcopal diocese requires that its seminarians complete a course in CPE before ordination to the priesthood and Alabama is one of those dioceses. A CPE course consists of 400 hours of pastoral care in a hospital or nursing facility setting. Seminarians act as chaplains under the direction of a staff of full-time chaplains.

While there technically are several ways to complete a CPE course, given the time demands of seminary, the only reasonable option is to enroll in a summer course which consists of ten forty-hour weeks.

The weekly CPE routine varies from institution to institution, but a small portion of the forty-hour week is spent in a classroom setting. Part of the classroom work is review and discussion of eventful patient or family encounters are reviewed. There is also didactic education from the CPE supervisors. There is some reading required, but it is not onerous. (Or so I am told.) During the majority of the week, the seminarian visits patients and family in a variety of settings, including: emergency department, ICU, med/surg rooms and rehab areas. The purpose is provision of emotional and spiritual support to the extent that support is wanted. Part of the forty hours are spent at the facility during weekend and overnight call. How much call and weekend time there is varies from location to location depending upon the acuity of the patient population. At the extremes of the spectrum are nursing facilities—with virtually no overnight call and little weekend work—to the local Level I trauma center where overnight or weekend call translates into almost constant presence in the emergency department.

There is no mandate that CPE be accomplished at any specific time. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of VTS seminarians want to do it between the junior and middler years. The rub is finding a spot. In order to have a CPE program, an institution must be accredited for the program and this requires a full-time staff dedicated to the task. This naturally limits the availability to large facilities. There are eight programs in the greater D.C. area and this includes Baltimore to the north and Fredericksburg, VA which is forty-five miles to the south. A confounding factor is that virtually every faith denomination requires CPE for prospective pastors, priests and rabbis. In metro-D.C. there are almost a dozen seminaries. While some seminary students go to their home states for CPE, most seek to do their training near D.C. Each CPE program accepts between four and eight applicants each summer from the various faith groups. While most seminarians do eventually find a spot, a position is not guaranteed.

Most students apply to multiple CPE programs, as did I. The standard application form is lengthy and requires several essays and many sites require additional essays. CPE sites interested in a student demand in-person interviews. All of this adds up to a significant time spent trying to secure a CPE position. The applications are due months before the CPE sites start offering positions and so the tension begins to build.

Happily, I received an offer from Sibley Memorial Hospital in D.C. and begin on Monday, June 5. For those of you familiar with Birmingham hospitals, Sibley is very similar to St. Vincent’s Hospital in several respects. They are of about equal size in terms of beds. While Sibley has doctors in all specialties, it is best known for care in the specialties of orthopedics, obstetrics and oncology. The emergency department at Sibley is Level II, so the on-call hours will not be as intense as those at a Level I facility.

My next post will most probably be a report on the CPE experience. In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying a great start to summer.

God’s Peace,

Randy