August 20, 2001

Unique brand of nurse rescues the parishing
___By Yvonne Betowt
___Religion News Service
___HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (RNS) --As a nurse, Eugenia Evans reports for work at her church once a week.
___Every Wednesday around 4 p.m., Evans places a sign reading "Get Your Blood Pressure Checked" at the end of a long table in the fellowship hall of First Baptist Church.

REGISTERED NURSE Eugenia Evans checks Thomas Patterson's blood pressure at First Baptist Church of Huntsville, Ala. She is part of a growing health ministry within many congregations across the country. (RNS photo by Carucha Meuse)

She lays out a digital blood-pressure monitor and the chart she's using to track the weekly blood-pressure readings made on her fellow congregants.
___Evans, a registered nurse, spends five hours each week working in an experimental program she designed for her fellow church members. In addition to Wednesday blood-pressure checks, she will coordinate health-related programs for members and people in the community and serve as a resource for those needing referrals to other types of care.
___She has been hired--though just for five hours each week--as the church's first parish nurse. In that role, Evans, who has worked at Huntsville Hospital for nearly two decades, focuses on the whole person--physical, spiritual and emotional.
___Parish nursing is not so much a set of skills as a concept. Programs are designed in different ways to meet the needs of individual congregations and communities. But generally, parish nursing combines a traditional ministerial/ counseling function with expertise in health care education, screening and referral skills.
___And that suits Evans: "It's why I went into nursing--to minister to people," she said.
___The term "parish" is more often associated with the Roman Catholic faith and is somewhat foreign to most evangelical Protestant congregations. "'Parish' is not a word that rolls right off a Baptist tongue," Evans acknowledged. "But it makes people ask what it is."
___Such questions serve a purpose, because Evans said the first step in the program is interesting and educating the public--members and non-members--and finding out what individuals need. At First Baptist, she's using a survey to do that.
___Cecile Lockridge, a 50-year member at First Baptist who takes advantage of the blood-pressure screenings, said she thinks the program is a good idea. "Our church has been a leader in many things in the community, and I think we should be a leader in this area."
___Another longtime member, Sarah Green, agreed.
___"We try to meet the needs of the community and have several health-related programs, such as the Alzheimer's and Parkinson's support group, the bereavement group and others," including exercise classes, Green said.
___Evans was certified as a parish nurse after taking a master's-level course at Samford University's Moffett School of Nursing in Birmingham. She spends Wednesdays at First Baptist doing administrative work, trying to get the fledgling program up and running. She was given a small office in the Christian Life Center and a six-month trial period to see if the program will benefit the congregation and community.
___The parish nursing concept started in Chicago at Lutheran General Hospital in 1984 and quickly spread throughout the Midwest. However, it is still relatively new in the Southeast, said Barbara Weinhold, coordinator of health ministries at Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn.
___"In Chattanooga, there has been a real responsiveness to what this is all about," Weinhold said. "Part of it is the awakening to the faith/health movement, which is abounding in the land. ... People are saying they need more than one element" of healing.
___Parish nursing is different from home health nurses, said Kay Hamrick, a pastoral critical care nurse at Huntsville Hospital and a theology student at the University of the South in Tennessee.
___A parish nurse is not under the guidance of a physician and can't do anything invasive such as giving shots or drawing blood. And parish nursing programs must combine two viable components--an inward call of someone in nursing to minister to a congregation and an outward call from a congregation for a nurse to minister to its members.
___Sharon Ball, a registered nurse with Hospice Family Care in Huntsville, hopes to go into parish nursing when she retires in a couple of years. She plans to take an October course at Lutheran General, the birthplace of the movement and the hospital where she worked immediately after receiving her nursing degree. She also took a "Spirituality and Healing" course earlier this year in Clearwater, Fla., to start her training program as a parish nurse.
___"It's like coming home for me," said Ball, a member at Ascension Lutheran Church in Huntsville. "I can use the training both here (at Hospice Family Care) and at my church."
___She hopes the 10 to 12 nurses who are members at Ascension eventually will form several care teams to offer a full-time ministry with home visitations.
___"I can see all kinds of uses for parish nursing," she said. "We can use it as a counseling program, for educational purposes, coordinate volunteers and other things."
___Weinhold, who has coordinated Memorial Hospital's program for three years, said parish nursing ministry draws from a divine example.
___"From a Christian perspective, it was part of the model of Jesus," she said. "He did a tremendous amount of healing in his ministry."
___There is little cost to a congregation to start a program, she said. Parish nurses do have to be licensed in the states in which they practice.
___"Some hospitals hire nurses and provide them benefits while the congregation pays their salary. Others are hired by the church, and others are volunteers," Weinhold said. "It can be tweaked and adjusted to any denomination or faith. It just needs to meet the needs of the congregation."
___ For more information on parish nursing training programs, call Gretchen McDaniel at (205) 726-2626 or Barbara Weinhold at (423) 495-4401, or visit www.advocatehealth.com.
___

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