What to Expect from the CPE Program
Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento
In reflecting upon yourself as a person and a minister, you will have the opportunity to refine your pastoral skills and to examine the quality of your personal and pastoral relationships. Through this medium of action/reflection, you will develop self-awareness, pastoral identity, theological and spiritual integration and a wide variety of professional skills. In each encounter, you will discover aspects of yourself as you relate to the Transcendent and your personal history. Through reflection, evaluation and group interaction, you will find an open stage for learning and growth. Our groups are designed to include a rich diversity of cultural and religious backgrounds.
If you are enrolled in the Full-Time Program the time commitment is M-F, 8:30am - 5:00pm. The Extended Program requires four hours of supervision one afternoon each week, and eight hours of hospital ministry.
What to Expect as a Student...
Direct ministry with patients, their families and hospital staff
You will work as the chaplain in particular clinical areas of the hospital, providing spiritual care to those on your assigned units. In addition, you will rotate on the overnight and weekend on-call service. You will have the opportunity to interact with many different people and situations through your ministry in our hospitals.
Clinical Supervision
You will participate in individual supervision, providing the opportunity to share and reflect upon your ministry and peer group experience. In addition, your peer group acts as another resource for learning and a platform for support through your CPE experience. The allotment of your time includes 100 hours of supervised education for every 300 hours of clinical work. At the end of each unit, you will participate in a final evaluation.
Work within a Peer Group
You will join a peer group made up of other CPE students and a supervisor(s), where you meet to reflect on your faith tradition, present specific cases of your ministry, practice pastoral responses and engage in interpersonal group relations (ministry group).
Didactic Seminars and Workshops
Our program offers many didactic presentations each unit, which include utilizing outside resources to enhance your education of the behavioral sciences, the hospital institution, clinical diseases, culture and inter-faith awareness, hospital chaplaincy, bioethics and other issues related to contemporary spiritual care. We draw upon the many resources of our hospital and the greater Sacramento community to examine the modern concerns of health care ministry. Within each unit, the curriculum will vary.
Worship
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Reading and Research
Although the residency program allows the opportunity to explore and specialize in an area of pastoral care, each unit will provide the opportunity to examine an area of special interest through reading and research. Students often present didactics based upon their own research and learning goals.