When Saint Margaret’s Anglican Church in Winnipeg was looking for a new pastoral care coordinator, they knew exactly what they wanted: Someone with a nursing background.
“The reality is a large portion of our congregation is growing older,” said rector Bonnie Dowling. “We thought it would be an asset to have someone on staff who has nursing skills and knowledge of the healthcare system.”
In 2021, the church hired registered nurse Holly Goossen for the job. Goossen, who works half-time as a community healthcare nurse, works 10 hours a week at the church attending to the needs of parishioners.
Goossen doesn’t provide direct nursing care in her role. Instead, she uses her training and experience to be alert to signs people might need medical interventions. She then offers to assist them in getting the attention they need.
“My role is to help people connect with the medical care they need and to navigate the system,” she said, adding her nursing training helps her recognize when people need that kind of help.
It’s “just the church being the church” by attending to all the needs of its members, she said.
For Dowling, Goossen is an asset to the church as it seeks to serve its members and support Manitoba’s overstretched healthcare system.
“I know how taxed people in the healthcare system are,” she said, adding that maybe the church can “relieve a bit of the pressure” by attending to the physical needs of members, along with their spiritual needs.
Goossen said her nursing training enables her to “look for things other pastoral staff might not notice.”
‘Trained to see things’
What Goossen is doing is called parish nursing, which was pioneered in the United States in the 1980s. Through it, congregations either employ or use retired volunteer healthcare professionals to meet the physical needs of their members and others. The goal of parish nursing is to focus on the whole person, not just their spiritual well-being.
That’s what Kathy Nelham is doing at the Community Bible Church in Ilderton, Ontario. The retired registered nurse has been serving as a parish nurse since the pandemic struck in 2020.
“I told my pastor it might be helpful for a nurse to help the church think through the health protocols and rules to help keep people safe,” she said. She also offered to look after members who might have health needs during the times of lockdown.
When the pandemic abated, Nelham’s ministry was so valued by the congregation that she was kept on. Today, she is a member of the pastoral team, volunteering five to six hours a week as a parish nurse to visit shut-ins and seniors, among others.
During her visits, Nelham pays attention to things the pastor might not notice such as if people are limping, having trouble getting out of a chair, rubbing a limb due to pain or struggling to find words during a conversation.
“I’m trained to see things like that,” she said, adding she can also inquire about how people are eating or whether they are taking their medications. “Those are not the kind of things a typical pastor will pick up on.”
During one visit, she learned a senior was having trouble using the stairs to get into her house. “I thought maybe we could build a ramp,” she said. Some church volunteers ended up doing just that.
Cara Brown is an assistant professor in the department of occupational therapy at the University of Manitoba. She sees parish nursing as a way to alleviate what she called the “revolving door” that results when patients are discharged from hospital too quickly, only to end up back there because they don’t have enough community support.
“The healthcare system makes the assumption patients have someone at home to look out for them,” she said. That can especially be a false assumption for seniors who may not have children or other family members living nearby, she says. “As people get older, their support networks get smaller.”
Congregations with parish nurses could “fill this gap,” she said, noting the province currently “doesn’t invest enough in community care,” a topic Canadian Affairs has covered.
Right now, “there is nothing to catch you [after discharge from the hospital] unless all the stars align,” she said. “Anything a faith community can do to watch out for others can help produce good health outcomes.”
