Catholic Health World - August 1, 2019

Page 1

Sr. Mary Maurita Sengelaub, RSM  7 CHRISTUS patients dig gardening  8 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION

AUGUST 1, 2019  VOLUME 35, NUMBER 13

Providence volunteers lend empathy and elbow grease to immigrant respite center Catholic Charities says volunteers are vital to meet the crushing demand for services near the border By LISA EISENHAUER

Carrie Schonwald says that she had braced herself for what she would see as a volunteer at a respite center on the Texas border helping with the recent surge in immigrants. Even so, she was overwhelmed by the seeming chaos and confusion as families sought desperately needed aid at the center run by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley. “It was just a real mass of people,” Schonwald says. The chaos was no doubt exacerbated by the center’s relocation days earlier. But even in the best of circumstances the swell of hungry, disheveled and traumatized migrants coming into the Catholic Charities refugee center in McAllen for help in mid-June would have stretched its staff and resources beyond their limits.

One volunteer, a Providence executive who doesn’t speak Spanish, made scrubbing the women’s showers a personal mission so each refugee could wash in a clean stall. That same woman became the go-to person for single fathers to hand off their young daughters for showers. Afterward, she braided many of the little girls’ hair in long plaits that became a signature gesture. Kindness to spare “It was like a sacred Amid the confusion, the conact,” Schonwald says. tingent from Providence found “It was like a ministry. It was just one their bearings. They spent After being released from a detention center along the U.S. border with the week doing chores that Mexico, a migrant child drew this picture of people sleeping behind bars. person. It was just her.” Another member of the Proviincluded serving meals; distrib- The photo of the drawing was one of several such images shared by the uting clothing; buying supplies American Academy of Pediatrics to draw attention to the emotional toll dence team is a nurse practitioner. She hadn’t gone to Texas as a clinical for, prepping and filling snack of detention on children. bags with bottles of water and ham-and- them on the next leg of a long journey that volunteer, but with the respite center’s own cheese sandwiches; and directing refugees for most had started thousands of miles clinic out of commission at the time, she to the buses and airplanes that would carry away in Central America. Continued on 3 At the time, the center was each day assisting upwards of 1,000 people who were recently released from detention centers and in need of food, a change of clothing and aid making their way to the homes of relatives already living in the United States. Schonwald led a team of six from Renton, Wash.-based Providence St. Joseph Health to help the center’s staffers and local volunteers — people she refers to as “superheroes” — respond to the refugee surge.

Health systems to keep watchful eye on 2020 census

Inaccurate decennial count could prove costly

rblfmr/Shutterstock.com

By KEN LEISER

Public health officials, health care foundations and other grant-making organizations, health policy experts and many states are mobilizing in an effort to promote participation in the 2020 decennial U.S. census. The population distribution data and other information that is captured in, or derived by, the census will determine how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal money is allocated among state and local governments for the next decade. The census officially begins April 1. This year the buildup has been peppered with heated rhetoric related to the inclusion or exclusion of a question on citizenship status. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the inclusion of the question, and the Donald Trump Administration ultimately relented.

Colored pencils, pens and crayons are added to craft packs for adult hospital patients.

Information technologists ‘pop A booth offers information about the 2020 Census at a street festival in New York City last month. the tech bubble’ to connect with ‘Patient-targeted Googling’ has benefits and pitfalls, but is it ethical? HSHS patients Continued on 2

By DALE SINGER

How would you feel if you found out that your doctor was researching you online to learn more about COMMONSPIRIT you? Happy she HEALTH was so thorough? Annoyed at her nosiness? Maybe a little of both? With more people using social media and more details of people’s lives available online, most health care professionals are a mouse click away from learning things their patients may not have shared yet — or may not want to share — with their health care team. While searching for information

about patients online may provide relevant information in some cases, it can also be an intrusive, if surreptitious, invasion of privacy. And, though the line between appropriate searching and inappropriate searching is far from clear, the practice is common enough that there is a growing body of journal articles on the Kuhnel topic of “patient-targeted Googling.” Leslie Kuhnel, division ethicist at CHI Health in Omaha, Neb., is among those working to help clarify this murky ethical

area. She published an article in the Summer 2018 edition of The Journal of Clinical Ethics examining the topic and describing TTaPP, a critical thinking tool developed by CHI Health’s Behavioral Health Ethics Committee. TTaPP, which is short for Together Take a Pause and Ponder, is intended to prompt health care professionals to weigh their intentions and motivations before conducting online searches for information about their patients.

By LISA EISENHAUER

Do patients realize clinicians are doing such online searches? For a lot of patients, it probably wouldn’t

For Trisha Redpath, the chance to take part in a project to gather mentally stimulating items for adult hospital patients hit close to her heart. “I feel like I’ve had a lot of people, friends, that have been in the hospital here at St. Mary’s and I’ve seen what they’re going through,” said Redpath, a technical analyst based at HSHS St. Mary’s Hospital in Decatur, Ill. “Some of them are lonely, don’t have any family and maybe just a couple of friends.”

Continued on 4

Continued on 5


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.