A Great Honor

As a chaplain working in the North Region of the Minnesota-based Allina Health healthcare system, I was honored to be recently nominated, along with my fellow chaplains, for an Allina Health Annual Award, the organization’s “most prestigious employee recognition award” which “honors passionate employees and teams who go above and beyond their normal job responsibilities, demonstrate service and caring to others and represent the best of the best at Allina Health.”

We were nominated for the following contributions:

The chaplains of the Spiritual Care department of the North Region comprise one of the most hardworking, caring, supportive, and intentional teams in very trying times. The team has supported patients and families during the worst of the pandemic and continues to be a source of counsel, resiliency, and reconnection for staff. The team not only worked together, often being flexible in their own schedules to make sure that nurses, doctors, other care team members were being supported, but also so that their commitment to patients, families, and the care that exemplifies Allina was continuously met. Each of the chaplains mentioned provided fantastic and compassionate care to their patients, families, and staff in the most difficult and tragic of cases. Team members also mutually supported one another and oversaw students when their manager became ill, and expanded the healing presence of spiritual care in each of their hospitals, as well as the system overall. Each of these chaplains has personally supported countless people and exemplify the spirit of Allina’s core values. The work that the chaplains did to support staff meant that they were tending to burnout on the units during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Is doing so they helped Allina retain staff who would have left, and became a force multiplier on the units they worked. In closing, the chaplains of the Spiritual Care department of the North Region exemplify in their daily practice what it means to care for the community and their colleagues. They also show what such care and support can look like and achieve.

Now, strictly speaking, I’m not a chaplain in the Spiritual Care department; I’m a chaplain in Allina’s Palliative Care department. But because I work in a hospital in the system’s North Region, the person who wrote the above included me as one worthy of recognition, which was very thoughtful of them. Although my fellow chaplains and I did not ultimately receive the Allina Health Annual Award, all of us remain greatly honored to have been nominated in the first place. It’s heartening to know we’re making a difference in so many people’s lives.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Spirituality and the Health Care Setting
• Interfaith Chaplaincy: Meeting People Where They’re At
• Difficult Choices
• From the Palliative/Spiritual Care Bookshelf
• The State of the COVID Pandemic: “We’re Collectively Walking An Immunity Tightrope”
• On the Second Anniversary of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Words of Gratitude and Hope
• A COVID Start to 2022
• Out and About – Autumn 2021
• Renae Gage: Quote of the Day – November 28, 2021
• COVID Observations From a General Surgeon
• Richard LaFortune: Quote of the Day – August 20, 2021
• Something to Lament
• A Pandemic Year
• Out and About – Spring 2020
• Memes of the Times
• The Lancet Weighs-in on the Trump Administration’s “Incoherent” Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic
• Examining the Link Between Destruction of Biodiversity and Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Sonya Renee Taylor: Quote of the Day – April 18, 2020
• Marianne Williamson: In the Midst of This “Heartbreaking” Pandemic, It’s Okay to Be Heartbroken
• Hope and Beauty in the Midst of the Global Coronavirus Pandemic
• A Prayer in Times of a Pandemic