The CommonSpirit Health Mission Track Fellowship: Emily Southerton

<p>hello everyone this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy I'm joined by uh Emily this evening a very special guest an administrative fellow but on a unique path you may not have heard about Before Emily can you please introduce yourself what you do for work and then also a bit about your career history with us yeah and thank you Cole for welcoming me here and getting to know the story and sharing it with your viewers like you said it's a very unique role so my name is Emily Southerton I'm a mission fellow with common spirit and I primarily am working at a California medical hospital which is downtown Los [Music] Angeles uh I'm not originally from this area I'm going to tell you a little bit more about that so I went to undergrad at acquaintance College in Michigan and I studied Theology and philosophy and Cole Cole and I were talking about I didn't first know right out of the gate that I wanted to study theology it took me a little bit of some Discovery and I had a um a wonderful family Mentor when I was in high school who said I'm like what are you going to do when you graduate what do you want to study in the future and I instantly told her I'm going to be a ski instructor because that's what I love doing and she's like in her Spanish accent her name is Rosa in her Spanish accent and she said you have more gifts and ability that can be a vocational line and so she got me thinking she was a really big Mentor in my life and got me thinking like where did my gifts fit closely with my profession with my call with where I want to be in this world and how I want to be giving back and so I went to grad undergrad and I studied theology philosophy it took me a little bit to get to that point of knowing what I wanted to study um but know like studying in Rome and um studying abroad first semester in Rome helped me to see architecture theology philosophy in a whole new lens as a living breathing study not just as something that we read but as something that's lifegiving and ongoingly developing so that led me then to study uh Villanova University and get my masters in Theology and it was during that time that was really trying to figure out am I going to be a teacher am I going to kind of sit in a Catholic School teaching theology or maybe at a grad level teaching theology or philosophy and it just didn't feel like that was fully where I wanted to be I really love this tangible aspect of seeing my actions of a day impact somebody's life in a good way and so a mentor of mine another Mentor um father Calder around he said you have this fasc ination for ethics you have a Fascination for Ministry and you're trying to figure out how to bridge them and you're also fluent in Spanish so he's like there's this thing called chaplaincy you should try out a unit and get your hands into real Ministry see how it feels notice if it's something that's a vocation that can draw you into a purpose and a meaning within your life and so that's what I did I did a unit of um clinical pastoral education at um Pine Rest in Michigan at the mental health hospital and that opened my eyes to seeing how there's so many ways to tend for one another and it can be through conversation it can be in a health care setting that is has so much suffering but also has so much opportunity of connection there's so much disconnection sometimes and somebody comes to a hospital that the the thing that they might need most is even just a simple understanding or communication from a doctor and that's what chapy does is build the bridge between their religious leader or build the bridge between their physician and their nurse and making sure that patient feels like they're the decision maker that they have full capacity and control and if it's not them then their family number I really love that that is uh because you know I talk about experience and I say you know going to a hospital should be an incredible experience and people say well it's a hospital you're getting getting you know painful medical treatment how can that be an incredible experience but like you said there's so much opportunity to really treat our fellow human in a really really incredible way and so I love that that's you know your work and and what you do and and I think that's beautiful but where were you at when you before you went into this chaplaincy you know what was the expectation and how did reality differ because most people in our audience probably have never exposed to a hospital chaplain or or any of those services so what was that before and after like for you yeah great Point um cool that a lot of times you don't see a chaplain unless it's your worst day unless somebody has passed that is either related to you or that you're near end of life now that's not true in all situations a lot of times a chaplain is called even when a patient is having a difficult time with their admission to a hospital it might not be that their their life is in danger but it might be that they're really having a disconnect with their community so before chapy like I said I was kind of struggling with do I want to be a teacher or do I want to have some other part and you had mentioned Cole about human dignity and that field of study and just how we relate to one another with dignity is what's really attracted me even to this job that I have now working at Dignity Health common spirit we we focus on that human person and who they are their uniqueness their giftedness we focus on even their unique care plan so that's honoring their dignity and honoring their individuality so before I was really trying to understand am I going to be in the academy or am I going to be more in the kind of contextual really practical aspects and I think I've learned looking back I've been a chaplain for seven years looking back I see there's a natural connection between the two we can as Chaplin we are board certified which means we have to go through um an application process through a there's different bodies of accreditation I'm accredited through NAC which is the National Association of Catholic Chaplin and to maintain our certification we have to do 40 hours of um of ongoing education year so that's the academic piece that I still get a tap into that I love but I also get the Practical piece of being able to help patients that might not have um discharge to um a home or discharge with shoes on with um shoes on their feet to be able to make sure that they have be the most fundamental things um to be able to move on with their life from the hospital you were a chaplain for sevenish years right quite a long time yeah why did you take the step into the the fellowship and and also how did you identify this fellowship and and what is this Fellowship right because not every organization you know probably not that many overall right have this Mission Fellowship so you know seven years into your career master's degree you're an experienced individual what what caused you to make this jump great question um I'm going to start with saying that the jump came from this desire to feel integrated into the work I do being a chaplain is wonderful you get to listen at the bedside you get to be in really sacred moments but I was getting a little bit of this restlessness of wanting to be a part of decisions wanting to be a guide for um our staff and for our directors to be able to help support them so I think about my skills and chapy help me to connect with a patient and that's only growing it's helped me to now connect with directors of Departments of radiology of um PT and to then be able to care for them as they're caring for their staff so I joined the fellowship back in July and it is a unique program like you said there's only two places within the the country that have um a mission Fellowship one is with um another really well-known system and then our own with common spirit and it's Unique because they're looking at the landscape of mission leaders and saying we have many senior leaders and we want to train the Next Generation to come up and to be able to be senior senior leaders that move alongside with the organization so it's a very unique program that is at multiple levels within common Spirit we um being a fellow we're all at uh we're all national employees so we get to be involved with system projects but also with the daily local projects of leader rounding and things like that and it's the only program um mission is often in faith-based hospitals and so when I think even more narrowly about Catholic Healthcare which is where I feel like my vocation closely aligns with um that gave me two options and at that point I really loved what I was seeing about the ability to be integrated in a system a market level and and a local level and that Drew me to to think about how can I grow as a leader and who can I become and so it was our mission and our values that really drew me and this idea of dignity and respect for one another that Drew me to a common Spirit yes so was it an application through you know like navc or through their website or how did you get steered in this direction and what was that process like was it similar to the other administrative fellows or was it a bit different so this is our biggest concern right now it's um how do we help other people who are interested in Mission come aware or be aware of this wonderful opportunity to grow into for me it was a matter of chance I had been looking for a director role as a director of mission and I had applied in Ohio to be a director of mission of um Chi living community one of our common spirit is an umbrella and it has Dignity Health and it has Chi and so one of the H the um long-term care facilities there had an opening and so I applied and that um leader had mentioned there's this wonderful program we have called it's a mission fellowship and she had thought I'd be a wonderful candidate for it so really for me it was by a chance I took that step of applying and and learned that there's so much more I need I would love to into and learn about and so um it was through my wonderful Mentor Rebecca Hilton who guided me to this Fellowship wow so hopefully this will do some advertising at least hopefully a few thousand people will see it and so on on that note of kind of getting it out there our audience has really heard over and over what you know the operations fellows what the corporate fellows do but you know day kind of one through through Where You Are now what kind of work have you been doing what is it you know what rotations what projects what has that looked like for you yeah so Mission has four or five depending on who you talk to it has four clear tenants I I um Nam them as ethics Community Health spiritual care formation and then the fifth one is Emerging Markets um and so some of the projects that I've gotten looped into um each of those five tenants have about a three-month rotation so you're involved um with our senior leadership on the projects that they are doing during that time and so some of the work I've done is around in in the Catholic Healthcare world there's a document called Leo C which is Latin for um essentially the the environment and yes let it be um let us keep in mind the environment let us keep in mind um solidarity with the poor let us keep in mind our resources and using them well and so I think of it as go green or green initiatives and one of the big projects that um I got to work on was rolling creating a um a survey mapping out where we're at across common spirit with implementing Latos and then um being able to create a strategic plan so a lot of the um the project work that I get to do is also operationally minded so you heard me mentioned strategic plan we use Google forms we use these ways to be able to operation operationalize but also collect our data to then uh be able to present and show just alongside any other field within the medical field to show kind of the the work that we're doing and that's a relatively new concept ccept Co usually in Mission it's like we're a lot of the um the untangle parts of healthcare especially if you think about um Mission you think about uh formation or our spiritual care those are really untangle that you can't really quantify but there's this need that yeah we need to be able to show the ways that we're providing care so that's one of the projects I've worked on another one is content developing for our across Comon Spirit we have a wonderful leadership program that forms our leaders both that are currently here and newly appointed as managers or above and so we have a program there that is designed to really Foster this relationship of as a leader how are you leading with our values in mind how are you leading with our mission in mind so those are for both new leaders and also leaders who have been here for a long time so some of that work looks like being able to present and there's different modules that coincide with our history Our Heritage who we are and who we say we are to help leaders to begin to make those connections that connected tissue between the work that they do but also the umbrella and and who they're a part of with common sping wow so you are are kind of working in much every area of the organization to make sure that when people are are utilizing your services or they're member of the community you're not really just seen as as kind of a hospital or a money-making Venture right it's you're you're instilling those Mission principles into the organization and into our leaders too it's um I I go back to my own vocation that there's meaning and purpose and why I'm here and what I'm called to do and that's very true for all of our clinical staff our leaders anybody who's within our organization there's a deeper meaning and purpose to why they're coming each day and and that's present throughout all of our our hospital it's just pause and attention to this human kindness or this um this reflection on who we are as Catholic Healthcare and why we're in certain communities and who we're serving it's it's all kind of this work working treadmill in a way of how we connect with both of both our community but also with the individual patient that we see come to the door so I'm sure a lot of members of our audience are are pretty interested in hearing that because it sounds like a a wonderful job to have but one of the questions is when it comes to kind of the more spiritual aspects of things what does that really mean you know what if what if a member of our audience is is a humanist or um you know completely other religion even if it's within Christianity how does religion and that spiritual care aspect interact are they separate things you know just so that our audience can can kind of get an understanding of what that's like yeah so when you say that I think of the word Catholic itself Catholic means Universal and so when we think about that in line of our own uh diversity our own religious age ethnic um even our own ability uh with um ability to hear listen talk walk those kind of things that um in CAPIC Healthcare comes with you everywhere you go we expect that who you are at home is who you are here at the at the hospital in your line of work so you're encouraged to bring your whole self you're to be able to best serve the diverse needs of our community we can't be all a certain way and yet meeting all of the needs of Community we have to be reflecting both who is within our community we're serving but also who's serving them so it's kind of a two-way street when we think about the Catholic church because it's there are strong values but there's also this huge openness to be inclusive and to welcome all and um we had talked earlier about Theology and how theology has so many different in a way veins or or um tentacles to it and the biggest one to think about and the most important one is really just showing each other how to love the person the way they would want to be loved and so when we think about Catholic healthare it's that same idea is how is social how is the Catholic Social teaching it's idea of um being united and being in solidarity with the poor how is that showing up in our line of work and um I had mentioned to that like we I work downtown LA about 12 blocks from skid row and we're specifically positioned here because we know our community has a deep need and we know that we want to be a part of that need and meeting all of our members within Society not just those that have health insurance but those that also don't and can't afford health insurance but we want to find that Innovative creative way to care for them it's not easy it's a challenge hope our hope is we can continue to find ways that are Innovative to care for them I love that and I you know I I love my community here in Philadelphia very uh deeply you know I've only been here a couple years but um I I feel a very kind of deep bond with the members in the community and so I I love that that's what you trying to do there for for your community is is to really ex extend that care to them what does the future look like for you in terms of future roles future positions where are we going you know after the fellowship and what have other people done post Fellowship specifically the mission Fellowship what does that cohort look like yeah um so we've had three cohorts mine's the third and each of them have stayed in Mission and have been in Mission whether they knew they were going to be in Mission past the fellowship or not all of them have stayed Within mission because of the work that we're doing and I would have to venture to guess to the way it connects to our own being and our own Humanity so for me personally my goal is to stay within common Spirit I've built so many great relationships I really get behind the mission and the vision I get behind this ability to think creatively and be challenged by both the obstacles in health care but also the uniqueness of being in a CAPIC Health Care system so my hope is to um continue whether it's here whether it's in Ohio whether it's within one of our our um care sites um I know there is tons of opportunity and especially Within mission there's there's tons of creative ways to be able to keep doing and being in this line of work so I know that's where I'll be um it's just a matter of figuring out those dots and connecting those which our program is 18 months so I still got about four months five months that we'll be um we'll have a much clearer picture in a few in a few probably weeks to months of course you have you still have a good ways to go so that's I mean of course time goes by fast in the fellowships but you have a good ways to go I hope that you'll you'll come back on in a year or or maybe a year and six months once you are a year into your new role and we can talk about what that experience has been like but thank you so much for coming on Emily I really do appreciate it thank you Cole</p>