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Chaplaincy Innovation Lab Resources for Chaplains Encountering Coronavirus

May 22, 2020
News

Updated August 5, 2021: Be sure to check out Transforming Chaplaincy’s free webinar “Religiousness and Vaccine Hesitancy: Implications for Faith Leaders and Chaplains.” You may also be interested in the Lab’s eBooks on staff care, trauma and moral injury, and more here.

We’re in this together

The Chaplaincy Innovation Lab invites all spiritual care providers, educators, and others to take advantage of the following resources, which we have gathered and are passing along for the use of all.

If you have resources and strategies you would like to share, please send them to us here. We will update this page as more resources become available.

Resources from Chaplaincy Innovation Lab

 

Other Online Resources

 

Online Educational Resources

 

Free Webinar Recordings

 

Helpful Reading and Contributed Resources

As we move through the crises brought by this pandemic, many of our chaplaincy colleagues have contributed or brought to our attention useful resources.  We hope that if you have resources you have found helpful, you will send them our way, too, and we will make them available to all.

To make these resources  more accessible, we have divided them by topic and listed them in alphabetical order.  Click on the topic(s) of interest to you below to get a list of the resources:

Caring for Buddhist patients

Caring for Christian patients

Caring for Jewish patients

  • Check out these resources from Neshama: The Association of Jewish Chaplains
  • For guidance on helping patients celebrate the high holidays in the hospital, Rabbi Dena Trugman has given permission for CIL users to view her guide. Click here.
  • Check out this article from CIL advisor Rabbi Seth Winberg: “You don’t need Zoom or Skype to say Kaddish without a minyan.”
  • Jewish emotional and spiritual care providers are available at Ruach: Emotional and Spiritual Support. If someone is in need of support, they can fill out this form and within 48 hours (Monday-Friday) they will be matched with a caregiver for a 30-minute call. Information provided in this form will be kept confidential and only shared with the team of caregivers.

Caring for Muslim patients

Coping with moral and other struggles

Crisis spiritual care

  • Download the free PDF Ministry during Pandemic by Dr. Naomi Paget, BCC, BCETS Fellow of the National Center for Crisis Management.
  • Check out the Spiritual First Aid Hub’s resources for churches.
  • Download a copy of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance’ Light Our Way, ( 1-2 copies available at no charge, here). This resource by National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (NVOAD) informs disaster response volunteers, first responders and disaster planners in the areas of emotional and spiritual care giving.
  • Check out resources from the National Disaster Interfaith Network on crisis spiritual care training (fee-based).

Customizable resources and rituals

Existential suffering and loneliness

  • Read this powerful article: “Existential Suffering and Loneliness with COVID-19” by John Rhee in Medpage Today.
  • Taking steps to care for mental health is an important part of staying well.  Take a moment to watch this video on helping older adults cope with anxiety and loneliness from Dilip Jeste, MD, Senior Associate Dean for Healthy Aging and Senior Care, Distinguish Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences, Director, Center for Healthy Aging, University of California San Diego.

Inspirational Stories and Lessons

  • Lessons for dealing with the pandemic from Rev. Matt Crebbin of Newtown. Congregational Church, who shares his experience dealing with the pandemic as a faith leader.
  • “Spiritual and Literary Resources for Use during the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Rev. Rachel Breyer of Emory University
  • Participate in the International Buddhist Chaplains Foundation’s Project Metta by submitting videos, artwork, messages, song, music, poems, etc. as a way to amplify hope, beauty, inspiration, and goodwill during this time.
  • Looking for a way to help staff connect with a sense of beauty and meaning? Angelika A. Zollfrank, MDiv, BCC, Chaplain at McLean Hospital took advantage of National Poem-In-Your-Pocket Day.  She distributed 160 poems to individual staff members at McLean Hospital. Every staff member could take an individually wrapped poem and then read it. “I encouraged folks to trade with another staff person if the poem they picked did not resonate. Some did. Others were delighted and told me why the poem they picked was exactly perfect for them. Others shared their poems with each other. Some staff passed them along to patients. From the chief of medical staff to mental health specialists and security everyone was delighted to participate. The poems were about creation, nature, spring, energy, loss, and all matters spiritual.” While National Poem-In-Your-Pocket Day is celebrated once a year, there no reason colleagues couldn’t replicate this idea on a different day.
  • “Lockdown,” by Brother Richard Hendrick
  • “Invitation to Brave Space,” by Micky ScottBey Jones
  • “When This is Over,” by Laura Kelly Fanucca
  • “A Prayer in the Time of Coronavirus,” by Rev. Heather M. Hinton
  • “Father of Relentless Affection,” by Chaplain Megan Cox

Grief and funerals

  • Download Ceremonies to Celebrate Together from Afar for ideas on funeral or memorial celebrations when gathering isn’t possible (available here).
  • Check out the CIL webinar and resources on Distance Funerals and Complicated Grief, available in full here.
  • Check out this website from Cornell Medical on dealing with grief in the era of COVID-19. There is a grief intensity scale patients and families with basic technological literacy can complete and receive feedback on whether they are experiencing complicated grief. There is also a section that offers coping information, ideas, help with identifying resources, and ways to communicate needs.  There’s also a “loss assessment survey” available to contribute to Cornell’s initiative.
  • Download this resource on Collective Grief “This, too, shall pass” from The Collective Psychology Project.
  • Read this article from the Washington Post on ways funerals are being addressed.
  • Download this PDF on grief in the age of COVID-19 from the Center for Complicated Grief at the Columbia University School of Social Work.
  • Explore the series of podcasts on the resource page on funerals and grief in the era of COVID-19 created by the team at Good Grief.
  • Explore these resources for end of life Readings and Blessings and for a funeral at home when you can’t be present at the funeral, all prepared by the team at the UK’s National Health Service in Somerset.
  • Follow up using grief cards with the poem “You will never be forgotten” that will be mailed out to families after the death of a loved one.

Phone support

  • Jewish emotional and spiritual care providers are available at Ruach: Emotional and Spiritual Support. If someone is in need of support, they can fill out this form and within 48 hours (Monday-Friday) they will be matched with a caregiver for a 30-minute call. Information provided in this form will be kept confidential and only shared with the team of caregivers.
  • For immediate phone support for those in need in the wee hours, refer them to San Francisco Night Ministry’s Care Line from 8 p.m to 4 a.m. Pacific Time.  Call (415) 441-0123.
  • Paul Reese provides freelance, trauma-informed spiritual care for LGBTQIA+ individuals and people of color. Paul also services multiple communities via Zoom, Facebook, and Discord.
  • Nightly Episcopal compline prayer at 10PM Eastern via Zoom.
  • Peter Corbett, Contemplative Care Student at the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care and former CEO, offers spiritual / contemplative care online. Peter can be reached here.

Self-care / stress management

Need to Relax a Bit? 

Musical events for chaplains link