Welcome to the Pastoral Care & Education Department's website at Vassar Brothers Medical Center located in Poughkeepsie, New York. We recognize that a medical crisis is also a spiritual crisis. It takes more than medicine to heal!
We are pleased to announce that Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is now a part of our patient care services under the direction of our Pastoral Care Department. We have partnered with The HealthCare Chaplaincy of New York and now offer an accredited extended unit of CPE that begins in late September and ends in April. Click on the CPE link for more detailed information.
As a division of Quality Systems, our mission is to meet the emotional and spiritual needs of our patients, families and staff as well as build strong bridges with our various faith communities while protecting patient privacy and confidentiality. Our purpose is to provide daily compassionate, competent, spiritual care with excellence.
We seek, as members of the interdisciplinary health care team, to develop and implement a plan of care to address identified spiritual care needs impacting patient healing and wholeness and communicate that plan to other members of the healthcare team.
Core Service Functions:
- Assess the spiritual values and needs of patients/families in order to provide timely, appropriate and documented pastoral and spiritual care interventions.
- Assist patients and their families in drawing upon their own spiritual resources as an important element in their healing and recovery process.
- Ensure that patients/families have ready access to religious practices and rituals which sustain them in times of spiritual distress and uncertainty.
- Provide pastoral/spiritual comfort and counsel to patients/families in anticipatory grief and bereavement crisis.
- Provide emotional and spiritual support to the healthcare staff in times of stress in caring for patients/families or personal crisis.
- Assist patients/families in the theological and spiritual aspects of critical decision-making; e.g. end of life decisions and clinical ethics consultations
- Advocate for patient rights in regard to spiritual, cultural and psychological values and how they impact a patient's behavior and their support system's response to their care
- Participate in organizational and departmental continuous quality improvement efforts and activities
- Provide value-added pastoral care, which enhances both customer and employee satisfaction.
Hours of Operation:
The services of the Pastoral Care Department are provided on-site at present Monday-Friday 9:00 am - 5:00 pm. On-call support is provided through the commitment of our various faith communities. If you or a loved one are in need of spiritual support, please contact the department directly at (845) 483-6644. If it is after hours or on the weekend, please contact the hospital operator at (845) 454-8500 and ask that a representative of the patient's faith community be called. If you require the services of a priest, you may also contact the hospital operator and ask that the Catholic priest be paged.
Once again, thank you for visiting our website.
Rev. John Simon, M.Div., MTS, BCC
Director - Pastoral Care & Education Department
(O) 845-483-6644
(F) 845-483-6396
E-mail: jsimon@health-quest.org
