Some distinctive features of UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals and our CPE program include:
- CPE interns at UCSF are exposed to cutting edge medical technology and care-giving in a fast-paced environment. Upon graduation, CPE interns will find that having served patients, families and staff at UCSF will have significantly added to the breadth and depth of their spiritual caregiving skills.
- The UCSF Palliative Care Program has been named by the American Hospital Association as one of the top three programs nationwide for its innovative efforts to provide end-of-life care. All year-long CPE interns participate in a curriculum that introduces them to topics related to palliative care and end-of-life issues, and two CPE interns each year serve a rotation on a palliative care team at UCSF. During their rotation they are assigned cases, participate in interdisciplinary team meetings, read research in the field, and are closely mentored.
- CPE interns at UCSF are trained in crisis debriefing and decompression, so that they can help people mitigate the stressful effects of traumatic events that they have experienced. This skill translates easily into all ministry contexts.
- The year-long curriculum offers in-depth education about professional spiritual care, ministry formation, and pastoral competencies. Each unit has a specific educational focus.
- UCSF is a teaching hospital. Chaplain interns learn alongside students from the schools of medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, which are all part of the UCSF campus. The CPE curriculum includes participation in lectures that are offered on campus, such as Giving Bad News to Patients; Heart Math (Tools on Stress and Anxiety Management); Medical Ethics; Children and Cancer; and many more.
- In the fourth unit of the year-long program, CPE classes will address preparation for the job market after CPE graduation. Students will have an opportunity to become familiar with chaplaincy certification requirements, begin writing their certification materials and receive feedback, find out about networking for jobs, and talk with a panel of professional chaplains.
- The participants of the CPE group generally come from diverse backgrounds regarding religion, spirituality, sexual orientation, age, physical ability, nationality and ethnicity. The CPE supervisors reflect some of this diversity as well. The diversity within the group and supervisory faculty enhances the learning milieu.
- There are a variety of resources at UCSF that support student and staff diversity, such as the LGBT Resource Center (the only one of its kind in a health care setting), the Multicultural Resource Center, and the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Diversity.