Don't ask Ella Collier what her typical day is like, because there isn't one. "I could spend my day talking with people on the phone and answering questions about what their doctor has told them about their medications," she said. "I could be meeting with people in my office, because they're in a crisis situation, or they need someone to talk to about a health or emotional problems.
"A lot of my day is spent talking with people and trying to find resources in the community that they need."
Collier's job for the past 10 years has been as parish nurse at Snellville United Methodist Church.
It's a job that combines diagnostic abilities, organizational skills and her knowledge of the community. It also allows her the freedom to pray with her patients and talk about their shared faith.
Mary Lawder never planned to return to a career in nursing. A former obstetrical nurse, she ran a successful program that taught private childbirth education courses for more than a decade. But a chance meeting with a parish nurse at a conference prompted Lawder to think about that segment of the professsion.
Lawder didn't know if she could balance the demands of parish nursing and family, but the concept of parish nursing - combining her love of her faith with medical knowledge - moved her to find out more about it.
Hired by Norcross United Methodist Church in 1998, Lawder sat in her office that first day and "wondered, will anybody come ... or even call?"
There was no need to worry. "Now I field hundreds of calls every month and work 25 hours a week - in theory," she said, noting that much of her job occurs after hours, doing whatever is needed, from crisis counseling to grief support.
"There was no doubt in my mind that I had been leading up to this job since I was 2 years old, when I said I was going to be a nurse," Lawder said. "What I have come to see and know is that there are people who come to church with happy faces and clean and nice-looking clothes, but there is a lot of pain, a lot of issues under that.
"We're all human, and it's such an incredible blessing to be able to talk with folks and help them reach some resolution and to find some answers."
Holistic health
Faith-based, medicallygrounded parish nurse programs have been in the United States since 1984. The development of parish nursing is credited to the late Rev. Granger Westburg, a Lutheran minister who was a pioneer in holistic health.
Westburg believed that health care professionals needed to be concerned not only with the body, but with the mind and spirit.
Professional parish nurses are registered nurses bound by state board of nursing rules and regulations, but they also serve as members of ministerial teams.
Both Collier and Lawder work for the Gwinnett Health System, but are paid by the churches where they work.
The arrangement allows the nurses to receive the medical expertise, health care benefits and legal backing of the health system, a relationship that benefits both the church and the nurse, said Jean Holley, RN, MS, director of parish nursing for Gwinnett Health System's Congregational Ministry for Health and Wellness.
Growing in Gwinnett
Next month, Gwinnett's parish nurse program celebrates its 10th anniversary, with eight nurses working with 10 congregations, including Baptist, Episcopal, Catholic and Presbyterian churches. The nurses serve congregations that range from 270 to 17,000 members.
Holley said an ideal parish nurse is a professional registered nurse who knows the community well.
"They need to know what resources are out there," Holley said. "They need to develop good listening skills, be able to support people and help do spiritual assessments. And they need to have a strong emotional base so they can help a person in the way that is best for that person."
Holley added that a parish nurse needs "to be able to attract and engage volunteers in the church to assist them with their programs, and they need to have patient-teaching experience, and know how to talk to all ages of people and teach them how to take care of their health needs."
Programs set up by parish nurses in Gwinnett range from career exploration and job training to managing anxiety or dealing with depression. Coordinating health fairs with mammograms, prostate and blood-pressure screenings are part of parish nurses' domain. Most parish nurses have a health ministries team, which helps coordinate the needs of that congregation.
"This is what they went into nursing for. When they have the opportunity to combine their desire to serve God and their desire to be a nurse, they get so excited about it," Holley said.
Parish nursing is not limited to Christian faiths. "Any faith group that would be interested in developing a parish nurse program, we would be interested in talking to," Holley said.
"This is not a job. It really is a ministry," Lawder said. "Having the ability to share your spirituality with clients and for that to be the norm; to pray with a client and not to think if I'm going to step on someone's toes if I do this."
For information about parish nursing, go to www.ipnrc.parishnurses.org or contact Jean Holley at JHolley@ghsnet.org