Nursing As Ministry

Designed to be a student-friendly textbook for faith-based schools, this first edition text focuses on nursing as ministry, not just spiritual care.

A Sacred Covenant: The Spiritual Ministry of Nursing focuses on the nurse's personal spiritual needs. Grounded in biblical passages taken from both Old and New Testament scripture, it provides a broad spiritual foundation. Each chapter begins with a scripturally oriented nursing meditation and ends with a biblically themed nurse's prayer. Anecdotes from practicing nurses are woven throughout each chapter to illustrate the spiritual themes.

Provides an overview of the current state of parish nursing, exploring the spiritual call to the parish nursing ministry, a spiritual history of parish nursing, and the role of the parish nurse as a "spiritual companion" in health and illness. Topics include the parish nurse's own spirituality, needs of diverse populations, homebound adults, and the hospitalised parishioner.

This book is a response to a need. Christian nurses, in a wide range of settings, perform their work based on beliefs drawn from their faith, but until now they've had no specifically Christian theoretical foundation to help them. Nurses working in the emerging field of "Parish Nursing" in particular need a framework that helps them explicitly link the tenets of faith and concepts of health in their practice, education, and research. Nurses of other faiths may also find the framework useful in seeing a way to relate their own beliefs and values to their nursing. In the book's Introduction the author tells why she devoted her doctoral research to theory development and how she went about doing that. The body of the book describes her nursing conceptual framework in depth, yet in an informal "reader friendly" style. The concluding chapter answers the question "Now what?" and helps readers make practical applications in their everyday lives. The four major components of the Faith and Health Framework are presented in detail: Person/Parishioner, Health/Shalom-Wholeness, Nurse/Parish Nurse, and Community/Parish, with the integrating component The Triune God. Described under each component are two organizing concepts, which in turn contain other key concepts, such as: mission, ministry, compassion, competence and communion.Various perspectives on the Framework are depicted in several full-color stained glass figures and in an inspirational poem written by the author. There are extensive bibliographic references and quotations from The Holy Bible, throughout, plus Appendices of relevant materials and resources.

Servant Leadership in Nursing: Spirituality and Practice in Contemporary Health Care embraces the philosophy that a true leader, in any venue, must be a servant of those he or she leads. This text includes current information on the relevance of servant leadership for nurses practicing in a health care setting with extensive literature review on leadership in nursing and healthcare as well as on servant leadership. This unique text also includes many powerful and poignant perceptions and experiences of servant leadership elicited in tape-recorded interviews with 75 nursing leaders currently practicing in the contemporary healthcare system.

The Essential Parish Nurse is a practical and useful resource for churches that are interested in developing a parish nurse program. Covering a broad range, it discusses the need for such ministry, a brief history of parish nursing, the role of the parish nurse, and other matters of interest to those wishing to establish such a ministry. This valuable resource includes an appendix with sample materials needed to start a parish nursing ministry, including: job description health needs survey congregational survey nursing performance evaluation outcomes measurement tool list of resources

Prayer in Nursing: The Spirituality of Compassionate Caregiving examines the role of prayer in the life of a nurse from a variety of perspectives, including: the history of prayer in nursing, the importance of prayer in contemporary caregiving, caring nurse-patient relationships, and the connection between prayer and a healing ministry. To encourage the practice of prayer, each chapter begins with a meditation and ends with a prayer reflective of a nurse's spirituality.

It is not possible to look at the ministry of Jesus without noticing his concern for the poor and the sick. He not only had a huge sense of compassion for people who were suffering, but sent people out to heal the sick and tell them the Kingdom of God is near them. This concern for health and wholeness has inspired Christians through the ages as they have cared for the sick, founded hospitals, and been at the forefront of public health movements. In the nineteenth century, the church was one of the major influencers in initiating ministries of health, both through the work of its own deaconesses and the involvement of its members as they felt a sense of vocation to nursing and public health work. Florence Nightingale was a theologian and statistician as well as being a nurse leader. However, with the advent of state health provision and private health insurance schemes, the role of the local church in health has diminished. This book describes a simple way for churches to re-engage with health ministry and presents evidence that underlines not only a Biblical authenticity for its place in the mission of a local church, but also a compelling rationale for its implementation. It will be of interest to church leaders and all those involved in health care.