The Department of Pastoral Care at Sibley has a rich and outstanding history with more than 40 years of dedicated service in providing comfort, care and support to patients, family members and hospital staff. The department is part of a holistic team that promotes the spiritual care of persons as an essential dimension of total care and services provided by Sibley.
The Department of Pastoral Care provides supervision and training for ministry students in an accredited program, Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), under the guidance of ACPE (Association of Clinical Pastoral Education). The program is coordinated and monitored by an ACPE Supervisor, The Reverend Sheila McNeill-Lee, Director, Department of Pastoral Care. The Sibley CPE program is an educational theological program designed for lay persons, seminarians, clergy persons, and pastors. The CPE program is also the first step for the instruction of qualified persons as chaplains in any of the national cognate groups for certified chaplains. CPE gives students an opportunity to engage in components that include pastoral formation, pastoral competence and pastoral reflection. The CPE program uses an experiential model of action-reflection-action that includes patient visits, interactions with peers in a group setting, seminars and lectures related to clinical and educational topics. At Sibley, CPE students, referred to as Chaplain Interns have the opportunity to develop their pastoral-spiritual skills with dedicated focus. This focus in part is contributed to the contextual setting of Sibley as a community regional hospital. Students participate in Sunday worship, patient visits, evenings/Friday night on-call, and educational seminars. Applicants are invited for an Admissions Interview when applying directly to Sibley. If the applicant desires a written Admissions Interview Report for admission to another center, please indicate this information to the supervisor before the scheduled time of the interview.
Students who complete the CPE program receive credit for one unit of CPE equal to 400 clinical and educational hours in pastoral education. Sibley offers two programs: a summer unit as well as a winter-spring unit. Receiving 4 units of CPE is the first step toward becoming a nationally Board Certified Chaplain (BCC) with the Association of Professional Chaplains.
Dates for winter–spring unit – January 3, 2011 – May 6, 2011
The program includes two one-half educational days, usually Tuesday and Thursday mornings or afternoons - educational days negotiable- dependent upon accepted applicants).
Applications accepted beginning August 1, 2010 until the program is filled. Decisions are made between September and November 2010. This is a part-time 24 hours per week program. This qualifies as one unit of CPE.
Dates for summer unit – June 6, 2011 – August 12, 2011 (daily participation required).
Applications accepted December 1, 2010 until the program is filled. Decisions are made between January and March 2011. This is a full-time 40 hours per week program. This qualifies as one unit of CPE.
For more on this program, please visit the ACPE website at
www.acpe.edu. You may download an application from the ACPE website. The ACPE address is: 1549 Clairmont Avenue, Suite 103Decatur, Georgia 30033 – 404-320-1472. Please contact the Pastoral Care office at 202-537-4084 or email
pastoralcare@sibley.org to express your interest in applying to the program.
A $25.00 application fee, check made payable to Sibley Memorial Hospital is required for all submitted applications. No applications are accepted via email. A letter of acceptance is mailed to those accepted into Sibley’s CPE program. A letter of non-acceptance is mailed to those not accepted into Sibley’s CPE Program. Tuition upon fee upon acceptance is $800 per unit. All students accepted are required through Sibley’s Human Resources Department to have a background check that may need access to your social security number as well as completion of the recommendation survey form from your supplied references.