National Catholic Health Care Week is Oct. 6-12, 2019

Being rooted in an identity of being God’s “beloved” is the key to spiritual resilience, Dr. Michael Hryniuk told 95 health care workers and members of Catholic ministries at the 79th annual conference of the Catholic Health Association of B.C.

“Being the Beloved,” said Hryniuk, quoting from Life of the Beloved by Father Henri Nouwen, “expresses the core truth of our existence.” 

The conference, titled “Addictions and Mental Health: Caring for Ourselves and Others,” was held at the Executive Plaza Hotel in Coquitlam Sept 19.

Hryniuk drew on the thought of author, clinical psychologist, and Catholic priest Henri Nouwen as he reflected on mental health and spiritual recovery. A registered psychotherapist in Ontario, Hryniuk said common mental-health risks for caregivers include burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious or secondary trauma. Signs of intense, chronic, caregiver stress include feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, overwhelm, fatigue, and numbing.

These can be brought about through multiple stressors, from personal (such as from family life), professional (such as emotional labour and empathic strain), workplace (such as in toxic work environments), and systemic stress (as brought on by systemic dysfunction or moral injury).

Hryniuk suggested caregivers look to the writings of Father Nouwen and see in his personal struggles and reflections an approach towards spiritual resilience. Nouwen’s writings include Wounded Healer, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, and Adam: God’s Beloved. In Adam, Nouwen imparts a critical observation during a life-altering season of caring for a completely dependent, but very patient, young man named Adam.

Father Nouwen discovered that “we, like him, are also precious, graced, and beloved children of God, whether we see ourselves as rich or poor, intelligent or disabled, good looking or unattractive.”

Hryniuk recommended three “Disciplines of Spiritual Resilience”: contemplative prayer, community support, and self-compassion.

Nouwen’s spiritual writings taught Hryniuk the importance of moving from being a high achiever to a high “receiver.”

“We can’t be givers if we’re not learning how to be good receivers,” Hryniuk said. “To know yourself, and to love yourself, to love your neighbour as yourself, this is critical. If we’re hard on ourselves, we’re beating ourselves up, we’re chronically ‘not enough’—we’re headed for burnout.”

Dr. Hryniuk at the Catholic Health Association of B.C.’s 2019 conference. (Sheena Devota photo)

In the workplace, Hryniuk suggested reminding and affirming one another in responding to the divine call of serving the weakest and most vulnerable people in society.

Richard Conlin, a seminarian who recently completed a clinical pastoral education course at St. Paul’s Hospital, said he appreciated the perspective shift from being a “wounded healer” to a “beloved healer.”

“You have to know that you are the beloved of God, and when you find that identity, you can be a source of healing for others as well,” he said.

Presentations at the CHABC conference included an introduction to the new Pastoral Visitation Program at Star of the Sea Parish, and two talks on groundbreaking initiatives at Providence Health Care.

“I was concerned that working in a Catholic organization as a non-Catholic would feel restrictive to me, but I realized that it was actually the opposite,” said speaker Dr. Marcus Greatheart.

Prior to becoming a physician, Greatheart was a social worker at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital where, he said, he felt more free than at non-Catholic institutions to support patients in using spiritual language that was meaningful for them.

Greatheart is involved in a pilot project at St. Vincent’s Langara that is looking at ways to serve people with drug addictions as they age and seek help from care homes. 

He said there exists “this fear that if we admitted patients on opioid-replacement therapy, we were going to be placing someone who is injecting needles next to our 92-year-old Chinese grandmothers,” and that could cause serious tension.

The pilot project focuses on stable, elderly patients who have a history of addiction and are getting opioid replacement therapy.

Greatheart spoke about B.C.’s opioid crisis, the biology of addiction, and reducing stigma. “These are our children and our family members, and that’s why we need to care,” said Greatheart.

Scott Harrison, a director of Urban Health, Indigenous Health, and Substance Use for Providence Health Care, spoke about creating an integrated care model for patient and staff safety in the context of a public health emergency.

Due to the current opioid crisis, staff at St. Paul’s Hospital in particular have “literally been in front of a tsunami,” Harrison said, listing a high amount of trauma room activations, behavioural issues, unusual side effects, and accidental overdoses by patients and hospital visitors.

“We know now that risk can be mitigated by having person-centred policies in place.”

Harrison said significant changes were made after setting up a Rapid Access Addictions Clinic and trauma-informed practice training for staff.

Scott Harrison (left), director of Urban Health, Indigenous Health, and Substance Use, said human dignity drives the good work of Catholic hospitals. (Providence Health Care photo)

“Consistent education and support for staff around trauma-informed practice and culturally safe care greatly improved staff safety engagement, and their knowledge of these subjects helps to reduce aggression and violence on the unit directly.”

“We’re known nationally and internationally for the work that we do around addictions,” Harrison said, and people are “shocked” to discover that it is a Catholic institution.

“My answer is always, ‘it’s because we’re a Catholic hospital,’” Harrison noted. “It’s our foundational principles of serving our most marginalized population and it’s the Catholic social teaching of seeing good in everyone, and human dignity. It’s because we’re Catholic that we’re able to make the strides that we have.”

Guest Arif Padamshi,  a senior operations leader at St. Michael’s Hospice in Burnaby, said, in sum, that the CHABC conference “was about caring for the marginalized, and that’s the important work that especially faith-based organizations do.”


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