St. Mark's Hospital Pastoral Care Center

About St. Mark's Hospital Pastoral Care Center

At St. Mark's Hospital Pastoral Care Center, we offer compassionate care services to patients during their hospital stay. We do this through offering support:

Emotionally

We will work with you to prepare for difficult procedures or provide you and your family with spiritual guidance through grief, loss or a difficult diagnosis. We also talk with you about treatment choices and goals of care while exploring patient and family fear, anxiety or discouragement.

Holistically

Our chaplains are attentive listeners, offering compassion and a non-judgmental and confidential presence that you and your family can rely on. We will help with advance healthcare directives and provide resources during times of emergency or when lengthy hospital stays are required.

Spiritually

We offer spiritual support, including conversations, blessings and prayers, to people of all faiths or no faith, all cultures and all beliefs. When requested, we will connect you with someone from your own faith.

Whatever your need, let our St. Mark’s Hospital pastoral care center team be there for you.

Support services we offer

We offer a wide range of services to ensure patients receive the support that is right for them.

Advance healthcare directive services

An advance healthcare directive is commonly known as a living will. It is used to officially document your wishes regarding medical care toward the end of life with resuscitation, certain treatment options and organ donation. It also allows you to name a healthcare agent who may make medical decisions on your behalf in the event that you are unable due to medical complications, such as unconsciousness or terminal illness. Our spiritual care staff is trained to walk you through these important documents and will witness your signature.

Blessing of the hands

Every spring during National Hospital Week, we gather a multi-faith group of spiritual leaders for the blessing of the hands. Hospital employees, patients and guests are invited to have their hands blessed by as many faith leaders as they would like. Each spiritual leader prays according to their own faith traditions, invoking and inviting blessings on the work of the hands of each individual.

Chapel services

The Chapel of the Good Shepherd is located next to the lobby in the main entrance of the hospital. This chapel provides a peaceful sanctuary for prayer, meditation and contemplation for patients, family, visitors and hospital staff. It is a sacred space intended to support reflection and provide solace and quiet for any person who is seeking a safe place to rest.

Chapel service schedule

Holy Communion is served Wednesdays at 11:15am.

Latter Day Saints (LDS) sacrament meeting is held each Sunday at 1:00pm.

Special holiday celebrations will be posted on the chapel door.

Community support

St. Mark’s Hospital Pastoral Care Center is a proud member of the Schwartz Center Community. In partnership with St. Mark’s Hospital, Schwartz Rounds are a monthly forum where clinical caregivers discuss social and emotional issues that arise when caring for patients. Schwartz Rounds are open to all St. Mark’s hospital employees and physicians.

Crisis intervention

When patients and families find themselves in the midst of an unexpected crisis, our chaplains are called on to provide spiritual and emotional support. While the medical staff works with a patient, chaplains facilitate communication between medical staff and families. Chaplains are clinically trained to be a non-judgmental presence for all involved in crisis situations.

Spiritual and emotional support

Our chaplains also address the spiritual and emotional dimensions of distress by providing spiritual care to people of all faiths and people of no faith. Their goal is to support each patient with spiritual resources appropriate to the individual by having a wide variety of spiritual resources available for patients, families and staff members.

Clinical pastoral education

For more than 30 years, the Pastoral Care Center at St. Mark's Hospital has been providing clinical pastoral education (CPE) from The Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE)-the standard for spiritual care that is accredited by the U.S. Department of Education. This service is provided to professional chaplains, seminary students, community clergy, lay people and healthcare providers.

Our approach to experiential theological education is designed to increase self-awareness and to develop and hone the students' ability to provide spiritual care for patients, families and staff. The depth of our CPE training equips students to strengthen the spiritual health of people in their care as well as in themselves. Following completion of CPE training, we encourage our graduates to join a spiritual care team and seek to increase the level of excellence in the growing field of spiritual care.