Chaplaincy Seminar

Over the course of the last three Monday evenings, I attended a three-part seminar series for rabbinical and cantorial students at the HealthCare Chaplaincy, entitled "'A Time to Die': Confronting the Loss of a Child". Attended by around a dozen students and organized by Rabbi Charles Sheer, the Director of Department of Studies in Jewish Pastoral Care at the HealthCare Chaplaincy, each session featured a presentation by a knowledgeable professional.
The presenter at the first session was Dr. David Pelcovitz, a psychologist, who spoke on the impact of loss upon a family. The second session's presenter was Rabbi Mollie Cantor, a pediatric chaplain, who spoke on comforting families and children who are hospitalized. Dvorah Levy, a social worker, spoke at the third session on loss of a miscarriage or a stillborn and the grief that follows.
I don't know that I would have otherwise have spent time learning about this topic on my own, but I found it to be helpful to me in both my personal and professional lives.
As an aside, us YCTers who attended were timely for each of the three sessions, which strikes me as a positive representation of our school.

Chaplaincy

As part of the pastoral counseling curriculum at my school, my classmates and I completed a six-week course in chaplaincy this past spring. The course, led by Rabbi Naomi Kalish, lasted over the course of six Mondays, the first and last being from 9-5 and the middle four being several hours in those four afternoons. Unfortunately, I missed the first session since I was at the JFSJ conference [that Monday (1, 2, 3)].
The course was a mix of classroom discussion, assigned readings, some writing, and, of course, meeting with patients - both accompanied by chaplains and by ourselves or with other students - at St. Luke's hospital several blocks away from our school.
I appreciated the course and learned from the course about how to interact with patients. Our interaction with the patients came in the form of being assigned a floor and visiting patients in their rooms. While this activity was no doubt beneficial, I imagine that seldom will I, in my rabbinate, be randomly visiting patients. Imaginably, most, if not all, of my visits will be with congregants or their relatives. (It is possible that while visiting someone, someone may call me over to visit with them, thus the possibility for a visit with someone unconnected with me.) Nevertheless, as pointed out to me in our feedback session, this type of visitation is more difficult than the type in which I may be engaged, thus, it is good training.