Beginning on Monday, January 23rd, Spiritual Care Services is pleased to offer a time of Midday Mindfulness at the Parnassus campus.  Similar to what we already offer on weekdays at the Mission Bay campus, these sessions will be available on Monday and Thursday afternoons from 12 noon to 12:15 p.m. in the Meditation Room (Moffitt/Long Hospital room M193, next to the Information Desk).  No prior experience with meditation is necessary, and everyone is welcome.  Please feel free to contact us at 415-353-1941 or download the PDF for more information.  Come join us for a recharging break!

The chaplains of Spiritual Care Services recognize and affirm the many people in the UCSF community who are devoting themselves tirelessly to the cause of justice. In a variety of ways UCSF students, faculty, and staff are striving against the racism and other types of discrimination that undergird and shape institutions in the United States, including our own campus and the medical center. Our team of chaplains recognizes the emotional and spiritual distress that people in our community, and particularly people of color and other marginalized persons, are feeling during this time in our national life. Aware of the significant, persistent, well-documented health disparities with respect to race, socio-economic status, culture, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and gender identity that exist in our country, we want you to know that we are here for you: to listen when you have need, to support you in this effort, and to advocate with you toward the goal of creating a more just and better world. You are in our minds and hearts now and always as we all seek to advance this vision.

Please feel free to e-mail with any questions or concerns. If you require immediate assistance with your spiritual and emotional needs, an on-call chaplain is available 24/7 at Parnassus (pager 415-443-2273) and Mission Bay (Voalté phone 415-476-9720).

Additional resources and support can be found at UCSF’s Office of Diversity and Outreach.

A PDF copy of this statement can be downloaded here.

The UCSF Office of Sustainability and Spiritual Care Services are teaming up to encourage people of all faiths to act in ways that are environmentally responsible, and act as good stewards of the Earth and the life that exists on it.  For an article about our department and how faith and ecological awareness interweave, please check out this link.

We are pleased to announce that the Rev. Susan Conrad, manager of spiritual care services, recently co-authored an article entitled “Spiritual Care for Cancer Survivors” with Dr. Jamie Alexis Cohen, and it was published in Coping with Cancer magazine in July/August 2015.  You can read the article by going to this link:

Spiritual Care for Cancer Survivors

Also in the fall, ABC-CLIO released a 2-volume encyclopedia entitled Asian American Religious Cultures, edited by Jonathan H. X. Lee, Fumitaka Matsuoka, Edmond Yee, and Ronald Y. Nakasone.  The Rev. Peter Yuichi Clark, UCSF’s director of spiritual care services, contributed a major essay on “Care and Service” to that project.  You can learn more about this resource by going to this link:

Asian American Religious Cultures

In keeping with our mission, we continue to pursue “caring, healing, teaching, and discovering.”

In a prior blog post, we discussed UCSF’s research project on the Spiritual Assessment and Intervention Model (AIM) and its application to outpatient palliative care settings for patients with advanced cancer, which was funded by a grant from the HealthCare Chaplaincy Network and the John Templeton Foundation.

We are very pleased to announce that this project has resulted in two recently published articles by members of the research team.  Here are links to all three of the articles that have been published thus far:

by Michele Shields, Allison Kestenbaum, and Laura Dunn

Transcending differences to study the transcendent: an exploratory study of researchers’ and chaplains’ reflections on interdisciplinary spiritual care research collaboration

by Richard A. Powell et al. (Laura Dunn and Allison Kestenbaum are among the co-authors)

“Taking your place at the table”: an autoethnographic study of chaplains’ participation on an interdisciplinary research team

by Allison Kestenbaum, Jennifer James, Stefana Morgan, Michele Shields, Will Hocker, Michael Rabow, and Laura Dunn

Enjoy your reading!

On Monday, May 18th, 2015, at 12 noon in Room N-217 of the UCSF School of Nursing at the Parnassus Heights campus, the Department of Spiritual Care Services will host Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., the long-time English translator of His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, in conversation with David Bullard, Ph.D., clinical professor of medical psychology (psychiatry) at the UCSF School of Medicine and a member of our department’s Professional Advisory Group. The two will discuss Thupten Jinpa’s latest book, A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives, which is based on experiments he helped formulate in the Compassion Cultivation Training program he co-created at Stanford University. He will discuss how the benefits of developing greater compassion may be even more life-changing than the practice of mindfulness. The event is free and open to the public; all are welcome! Contact our department’s main office at 415-353-1941 for more information.

On February 1st, also known as Super Bowl Sunday, UCSF Medical Center opened its new Mission Bay campus for inpatients.  The 878K-square-foot facility includes outpatient clinics as well as three hospitals: UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, with 183 beds serving all pediatric specialties; UCSF Bakar Cancer Hospital, with 70 beds serving adult patients with orthopedic, urologic, gynecologic, head and neck, and gastrointestinal and colorectal cancers; and UCSF Betty Irene Moore Women’s Hospital, with 36 beds serving women of reproductive age to menopause and beyond.

Spiritual Care Services was there on that first day to greet the patients moving over from the Parnassus Heights and Mount Zion campuses, as well as their families and visitors, and chaplains will maintain a strong presence at both Parnassus and Mission Bay campuses to provide emotional and spiritual support wherever and whenever needed.  An on-call chaplain is available 24/7 at Mission Bay by paging 415-443-5786 [LiSTeN], just as an on-call chaplain continues to be available 24/7 at Parnassus by paging 443-2273 [CARE].

One great feature of the new Mission Bay building is that it has five Meditation Rooms available to patients, family members, visitors, and staff members for meditation, prayer, or silence.  The main Meditation Room is on the first floor near the Children’s Hospital lobby entrance, and it includes an adjacent garden with a walking labyrinth for outdoor contemplation and prayer (seen in this photo taken by Chris Diamond Santiago on Move Day):

Four smaller Meditation Rooms are located in the adult hospitals near the family lounges on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth floors.

We are also fortunate to be able to provide Roman Catholic sacramental ministry for patients and their loved ones upon request.  Pictured below are Fr. Raphael Lazier, Ms. Kate Perdigon (administrative analyst for the Mission Bay campus), Chaplain Pearl Jue (one of our year-long student chaplains), and Fr. John Paul Otanwa.

The first week has been extremely hectic and rewarding, and we look forward to many years of fruitful service at Mission Bay as well as Parnassus!