Each Wednesday around 4 p.m., Eugenia Evans places a sign reading “Get Your Blood Pressure Checked” at the end of a long table in the fellowship hall of First Baptist Church, Huntsville.
She lays out a digital blood pressure monitor and the chart she’s using to track the weekly blood pressure readings made on her fellow congregants.
Evans, a registered nurse, spends five hours each week working in an experimental program she designed for her fellow members at First Baptist, Huntsville.
She has been hired to be the church’s first parish nurse. In that role, said Evans, who has worked at Huntsville Hospital for nearly two decades, she focuses on the whole person — physical, spiritual and emotional.
Evans’ work is typical of that being done by parish nurses at Baptist churches throughout Ala-bama as congregations begin to embrace the concept.
“One of the overall philosophies of parish nursing is the bridging of faith and health,” said Gretchen McDaniel, parish/missions coordinator and an instructor at the Ida V. Moffet School of Nursing at Samford University.
“For so many years, you went to church for your spiritual needs and you went to the hospital for medical needs.
“Scientific research is starting to bear out that many times there is a connection between your spiritual being and your health,” McDaniel said.
“I think that’s where the parish nurse comes into play, helping a person understand that and deal with issues that may be affecting their health.”
Parish nursing is not so much a set of skills as a concept. Programs are designed to meet the needs of congregations and communities. But generally, parish nursing combines a traditional ministerial/ counseling function with expertise in health care education, screening and referral skills.
And that suits Evans: “It’s why I went into nursing — to minister to people,” she said.
“Parish is not a word that rolls right off a Baptist tongue,” Evans said. “But it makes people ask what it is.”
Such questions serve a purpose, because Evans said the first step in the program is interesting and educating the public and finding out what individuals need. She’s using a survey to do that.
Longtime member Sarah Green said, “We try to meet the needs of the community and have several health-related programs, such as the Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s support group, the bereavement group and others.”
Evans spends Wednesdays at First, Huntsville, doing administrative work, trying to get the program up and running.
She was given an office in the church’s Christian Life Center and a six-month trial period to see if the program will benefit the congregation and community.
The parish nursing concept began in Chicago at Lutheran General Hospital in 1984 and quickly spread throughout the Midwest. However, it is still relatively new in the Southeast, said Barbara Weinhold, coordinator of health ministries at Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn.
McDaniel said some two dozen parish nurses are working in churches throughout Alabama but believes that number will continue to increase.
“There’s still a need,” McDaniel said. “I get a number of calls weekly from people wanting to know more about parish nursing and how they get started.
“As various churches get parish nurses in their churches or health ministries, another church will hear about it and they become interested,” McDaniel added. It’s definitely not saturated in the state. We have a long way to go.
“A parish nurse is a nurse who works in a church, usually coordinating a health ministry, and particularly focuses on health promotion,” McDaniel said.
Unlike hospital nurses, McDaniel said parish nurses serve more as health advocates as they educate and counsel church members on health issues.
“The difference is that it is not a hands-on type of nursing practice,” McDaniel said. “It’s more of a teacher/advocate/counselor for health issues, as opposed to a nurse in a hospital who’s doing injections, IVs and technical things.”
A parish nurse is not under the guidance of a physician and can’t do anything invasive.
And parish nursing programs must combine two viable components: an inward call of someone in nursing to minister to a congregation and an outward call from a congregation for a nurse to minister to its members.
Weinhold, coordinator for Memorial Hospital’s program for three years, said parish nursing ministry draws from divine example.
“From a Christian perspective, it was part of the model of Jesus,” she said. “He did a tremendous amount of healing in His ministry.”
There is little cost to a congregation to start a program, she said.
Parish nurses do have to be licensed in the states in which they practice.
“Some hospitals hire nurses and provide benefits while the congregation pays their salaries. Others are hired by the church, and others are volunteers,” Weinhold said. “It can be adjusted to any denomination or faith.”
McDaniel said Samford, the Alabama Woman’s Missionary Union and Baptist Health System work together to bring a basic preparation parish nurse course to the state.
For information on parish nursing, call McDaniel at 205-726-2626 or Barbara Weinhold at 423-495-4401 or visit www.advocatehealth.com.
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