Education
INTEGRATE
CLINICAL PASTORAL EDUCATION IN HEALTH
DELIVERY SYSTEM
by : Educational News Reporter
Rev. Prof. Laurie Garrett-Cobbina, Shaw Family Chair
of Clinical Pastoral Education of San Francisco Theological Seminary, USA, has
advocated for the integration of Clinical Pastoral Education into the health
delivery in Ghana to help solve most of the sicknesss related to spirits and
emotions.
She said that it was time for the health sector in
the country to look at the importance and how best they could train more
professionals in the area of providing clinical pastoral care to patients at
health facilities.
Rev. Prof. Garrett Cobbina, advocated for the
integration at the Spiritan University College, Ejisu in the Ashanti Region at
the weekend when nine (9) students were graduated after going through six (6)
weeks intensive Clinical community-based Pastoral Education programme to
complete the first Unit of the Programme.
The students were clergy and lay people from Ghana,
USA, North Columbia and Kenya.
She explained that Clinical Pastoral Education was
to be seen as one of the major programmes which could be used in the health
delivery to provide a holistic health delivery for Ghanaians as it had been
practised in most of the developed countries.
Rev. Prof. Garret Cobbina also leader of the team
which came from USA to facilitate the program in collaboration with the
Spiritan University College, observed that not all health problems needed
medical care, others could be healed through the use of Clinical Pastoral
Education tools which might not need any drug.
She mentioned health related problems like
depression, stress, and others as some of the problems Clinical Pastoral
Educators could handle to reduce the pressure and tension medical doctors had
to go through in the country.
She indicated that
such a program could be offered for pastors, religious professionals, theology
students and qualified laypersons who seek further development of their
pastoral skills and added that the program would help those who would go
through it to integrate knowledge from theological, psychological and social
science disciplines into the practice of their pastoral ministry.
Rev. Fr. Anthony
Anomah, Rector of Spiritan University College, commended the Association for the
Clinical Pastoral Education of USA and the San Francisco Theological Seminary,
USA for partnering with the Spiritan University College for the first Unit of
the program and hoped that the remaining three units of the program would be a reality
to benefit more people who would be interested in the Clinical Pastoral Care in
the country.
