Ministry leads in palliative care 2 Keeping Up 7 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
NOVEMBER 1, 2019 VOLUME 35, NUMBER 19
Initiatives are zeroing in on racial disparity in maternal mortality Ministry experts
available to offer guidance on Catholic identity audits
By LISA EISENHAUER
By JULIE MINDA
Courtesy SSM Health
After dramatically reducing the number of women dying from pregnancy-related causes, California is now looking at ways to improve outcomes for black women, who, as a group, are still dying from pregnancy and childbirth complications at a rate about three times higher than the general population. The efforts being led by the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative are among others across the nation targeting the racial disparity in maternal mortality rates. The collaborative was founded at Stanford University School of Medicine with support from the state of California in response to rising rates of death and profound complication among pregnant women. It counts almost all hospitals with maternity units in the state among its members, including those in the Providence St. Joseph Health and CommonSpirit Health systems. The decrease in maternal deaths in California has come as the rate for the nation has increased. Since 2006, when the collaborative was founded, the California
Early this year, CHA introduced a tool for the association’s representative members called the Ministry Identity Assessment. It is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide for evaluating how well Catholic health systems are living out their mission as a ministry of the Catholic Church. Over the summer, 18 mission and ministry experts underwent CHA training to prepare for assignments as “external assessment observers.” Those individuals can
Nurse Tierra Dean checks on a patient and her newborn at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in St. Louis. The hospital delivers more babies than any other in the SSM Health system. Like other hospitals, it has put vetted practices in place to prevent maternal deaths and complications.
data for the state are available. In contrast, the national maternal mortality rate climbed from 15.7 in 2006 to 17.2 deaths per
Department of Public Health says the rate has dropped 55 percent from 16.9 deaths per 100,000 live births to 7.3 deaths in 2013, the last year for which publicly released
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Our Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge steps up safety efforts Courtesy Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center
By LISA EISENHAUER
Team members gather in the trauma unit at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La., to pray on July 17, 2016, after a shooting in the city in which six law enforcement officers were hit by gunfire. Five of the officers were brought to the medical center for treatment. Three of the officers who were shot did not survive.
When one of their own nurses was fatally shot by an ex-boyfriend outside her home last year, leaders at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La., decided to step up their efforts to improve safety for their staff and patients. The attack came as the hospital was seeing an increase in reports of patients, their family members or visitors assaulting its team members, said Coletta Barrett, vice president of mission at Our Lady of the Lake. Our Lady of the Lake set up the Workforce/Workplace Safety Committee at the end of last year, underscoring its determination to act quickly and decisively to keep its workers safe both in the hospital
function as impartial observers and advisers during an organization’s self-audit of mission effectiveness and Catholic identity. Many of the external observers are recently retired or semiretired ministry leaders with expertise in Catholic identity and mission (see sidebar, page 3). CHA is recruiting additional seasoned ministry professionals to train as observers in the identity assessment process. “The goal of the assessment is to have
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Michael McCarthy and Sr. Laura Wolf, OSF, take part in a summer training session at CHA, to prepare to be external assessment observers.
CommonSpirit’s EthicsLab podcast draws listeners across globe Kevin Murphy says he was looking for a way to create health care ethics education that was available anytime and anywhere when he came up with the idea for a podcast. That, in short, is how EthicsLab was born two years ago in a recording studio in Englewood, Colo., with a support team from what was then Catholic Health Initiatives. The monthly production features national and international guests providing knowledge and tools to respond to some of the more challenging issues in clinical ethics, including by identifying the common ground shared by the Catholic ethical and social justice tradition and public debate on health care ethics issues.
Courtesy CommonSpirit Health
By COLLEEN SCHRAPPEN and LISA EISENHAUER
Kevin Murphy, right, interviews Brian Yanofchick for a podcast. Murphy is senior vice president of mission innovation, theology and ethics at CommonSpirit Health and host of its EthicsLab and other podcasts. Yanofchick is chief sponsorship officer, Atlantic Group, for Bon Secours Mercy Health.
Murphy taps leaders both within and outside of Catholic health care ethics as podcast guests. Each EthicsLab episode has discussions by a panel of subject experts who offer practical advice and tools to improve patient care and frame what Murphy calls “tough choice ethical challenges.” Titles of EthicsLab episodes include “Organ Donation: Foundational Ethical Approaches,” “Human Trafficking” and “Moral Distress and Moral Resiliency.” Murphy says he strives to make the podcast conversations relevant and inclusive of those who come from a diversity of backgrounds. “Any conversation on human dignity crosses whatever tradition or experience you may come from,” he says. The podcast “gives us that ability to interview and engage high-quality experts Continued on 6