CLINICAL SPIRITUAL SUPPORTS
Professional Spiritual Care Practitioners
St. Joseph’s employs a team of spiritual care practitioners (SCPs) who provide professional spiritual care involving compassionate and culturally sensitive support and counseling. SCPs have graduate level training in spirituality and counselling and follow the certification process of the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care. Many of the team are also members of the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario.
Creative Spiritual Programming
Many creative initiatives offer connection to spirituality across St. Joseph’s in addition to the traditional religious services, including: virtual reality experiences that focus on sacred spaces and immersive nature participation at the Southwest Centre; interdisciplinary collaboration involving equine therapy in St. Joseph’s Veterans Care Program; Hope Group focusing on nourishing
Immersive experiences with virtual reality technology at Southwest Centre for Forensic Mental Health Care help increased connectedness and harness nature’s healing power.
individual spirituality and Love Groups targeting loneliness at Parkwood Institute’s Finch Family Mental Health Care Building, Eco-Spirituality Groups at Mount Hope Centre for Long Term Care, and other nature-orientated spiritual groups across sites.
Interdisciplinary Spiritually Integrated Care
While professional spiritual care is available across St. Joseph’s, spiritually integrative clinicians also help nourish spiritual health of patients and residents. Examples of clinicians who incorporate spiritual health into their practice and lead spiritually oriented research include occupational therapist, Clark Heard, OTD, at Southwest Centre and clinical psychologist Dr. Serena Wong at the Finch Family Mental Health Care Building. Working together with the interdisciplinary team that includes spiritual care, the spiritual health of patients and residents is integrated into the care plan.
Within the Veterans Care Program at Parkwood Institute Main Building, an interdisciplinary team facilitates equine therapy with the aim of nourishing psycho-spiritual wellbeing and a sense of meaning and belonging.
SPIRITUAL CARE CLINICIAN EDUCATION
Clinical Psychospiritual Education (CPE)
The Spiritual Care Department is proud to be an accredited teaching centre with the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care (CASC), with a successful accreditation in 2025 securing accreditation through to 2030. With two spiritual care educators, Stephen Yeo at Southwest Centre and Heather Vanderstelt at St. Joseph’s Hospital, the program trains spiritual care practitioners and psychospiritual therapists, with an experiential-based approach that provides students with learning opportunities in the art, science and practice of spiritual care within a clinical health care setting.
STAFF SPIRITUAL HEALTH SUPPORTS
Nourishing Spiritual Health as
Part of Staff Wellbeing
A new wellbeing strategy, inspired by a KPMG audit of staff wellness and burnout, along with feedback from staff, credentialled professional staff and volunteers, highlights spiritual health as a key component of employee health. Components of nursing spiritual health include staff education on spiritual health rooted Fisher’s (2011) model of harmony. Education regarding spiritual health is offered through newsletters, intranet stories, E-Connect features and education sessions.
Spiritual Support for Staff
The Spiritual Care Team helps nurture staff spiritual health through spiritual reflection, conversation, celebration and affirmation. They offer peer supportive listening, emotional support and connect staff to internal and external resources. The teams also engage in clinical and ethical reflection and provide memorials, grief reflection and bereavement support.
Staff Meditation, Reflection and Wellbeing
The Spiritual Care Department offers virtual monthly meditation and a collection of 70 meditations to choose from ranging from mindfulness to spiritual reflection. Additional mindfulness training and holistic resources are offered through wellbeing webinars, including themes of resiliency and finding inner strength that are foundational to the corporate wellbeing strategy.
Mission Leadership Training
A two-day course is offered for leaders that is centered on developing self-reflection and connection with the history and mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph as well as the principles and values of Catholic Social Teaching, which includes integral domains of ethics and spirituality. The training aims to ground leadership practices with appreciation for the heritage of compassion demonstrated by the Sisters of St. Joseph.
Sacred Moments at St. Joseph’s
Sacred Moments is an important initiative in making the connection between in-the-moment experiences and one’s sense of the sacred or significant. Dr. Serena Wong has contributed to research and presented at a 2025 Imaginarium presentation, and future research is planned with Serena Wong, Dale Nikkel, Marleen Van Laethem and Rachel Turner to continue to integrate Sacred Moments at St. Joseph’s.
Historic statue of Saint Joseph and Jesus at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
SPIRITUAL SPACES
Reflection and Prayer Spaces and Chapels
All five main sites of St. Joseph’s nourish spiritual health by providing both a Reflection and Prayer Space, and a Chapel to provide a room for patients, residents and staff to engage in spiritual practice. Sacred texts, spiritual reading materials, symbols and other sacred objects are available. Additional resources are available upon request.
Outdoor and Indoor Labyrinth Focus for Spiritual Reflection
Sizeable outdoor labyrinths are featured at St. Joseph’s Parkwood Institute and at Southwest Centre. Both sites also include indoor labyrinths, while Parkwood Institute has a portable labyrinth used for patients, residents and staff. Labyrinth research by clinicians at St. Joseph’s has resulted in significant publicity, including local radio engagement for World Labyrinth Day by expert Stephen Yeo, spiritual care practitioner at Southwest Centre.
Nature-Oriented Healing and Gardens
Opportunity exists across St. Joseph’s to access natural healing spaces and gardens. Some of the projects integrating the healing benefits of nature include the garden project at Southwest Centre and the medicine garden at Parkwood Institute Main Building that contributes to nourishing health and being good stewards of the environment.
SPIRITUAL CONNECTION TO THE COMMUNITY
Volunteers in Spiritual Care and Community Spiritual Connections
Supported by Volunteer Services, Spiritual Care programs across St. Joseph’s receive support from 29 Spiritual Care volunteers who help support a wide range of spiritual and religious services and offer denominational-specific supports. Included in this supportive group is a dedicated Roman Catholic Priest who helps ensure the traditions of the Sisters of St. Joseph are celebrated. Spiritual Care maintains connection with spiritual leaders and clergy in the community who contribute to church services and respond to particular spiritual needs of patients and residents connected to the community.
The new Reflection and Prayer Space at Mount Hope Centre for Long Term Care that features a commissioned stained glass window echoing the nature surrounding the home.
The historic St. Joseph’s Chapel at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Supported by volunteers, spiritual and religious services are offered across our organization.
The Onuhkwa:t Tsi’tKah^tay^’ medicine garden on-site at Parkwood Institute is a space that supports using the power of food to heal, nurture and strengthen. The Food and Nutrition Services team make it a welcoming place to support patients and staff wellbeing.
Biigajiiskaan is a wholistic wellness program offering a two-eyed seeing approach integrating both traditional healing and Western psychiatric treatment.
BIIGAJISKAAN
Co-delivered by St. Joseph’s in partnership with Atlohsa Family Healing Services, Biigajiiskaan is a referral-based wholistic wellness program which aims to provide accessible, culturally safe, specialized care for Indigenous, First Nations, Metis and Inuit people with serious mental illness, addictions and concurrent disorders. The program is a response to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission which seeks both to bring into the public conscious and to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Based at St. Joseph’s Finch Family Mental Health Care Building, Biigajiiskaan offers a two-eyed seeing approach of both traditional healing services which benefit the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical parts of participants through ceremony, traditional medicines and cultural practices; and western psychiatric treatment to Indigenous individuals, as well as addressing common barriers and bridging care transitions for in patients, outpatients, and community outreach clients in the London-Middlesex region.
RECENT SPIRITUAL HEALTH PRESENTATIONS
Spiritual Care Awareness Week Presentations
Each year, the Spiritual Care Department celebrates the spiritual aspect of care by focusing on a spiritually related topic relevant to patients and residents. Past events, in collaboration with the St. Joseph’s Health Care Society, include:
• Nourishing Spiritual Health: A New Lens to Wholeness (Dale Nikkel)
• Compassion in the Community: A Panel Discussion (Local Experts)
• From Moral Distress to Moral Imagination (Virtual with Guest Dr. Francis Maza)
• Overcoming Barriers to Spiritual Health (Virtual with Guest Dr. Harold Koenig)
Interprofessional Presentations Focusing on Spiritual Health
• Wong, S. (2025, January 21). Sacred moments for whole health: research, application, and visioning [Invited lecture]. Lawson Research Imaginarium Series, London, Ontario, Canada.
• Heard, C., Scott, J., & Yeo, S. (2024, April 16). Spiritual Care Professionals as Unit-Based Interdisciplinary Team Members? Considering Patient and Staff Perceptions in a Forensic Mental Health Care Setting [Conference Session]. Canadian Association for Spiritual Care National Conference, London, Ontario, Canada.
• Vanderstelt, H., Weima, K., & Mahood, M. (2024, April 16). Implementation of the FICA Spiritual Assessment Tool in a Long Term Care Quality Improvement Project [Conference Session] Canadian Association for Spiritual Care National Conference, London, Ontario, Canada.
Health – St. Joseph’s Health Care London
SPIRITUALLY ORIENTED RESEARCH INVOLVING CLINICIANS AT ST. JOSEPH’S
Bockrath, M. F., Pargament, K. I., Wong, S., Harriott, V. A., Pomerleau, J. M., Homolka, S. J., Chaudhary, Z. B., & Exline, J. J. (2022). Religious and spiritual struggles and their links to psychological adjustment: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 14(3), 283–299. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000400
Currier, J. M., Pearce, M., J., Wong, S., Salcone, S., Brock, B., Kim, E., Kemp, D., Hinkel, H., Oxhandler, H. K., Vieten, C., Fox, J., Polson, E. C., & Pargament, K. I. (In press). Acceptability and feasibility of infusing training in spiritual and religious competencies in mental health graduate education. Training and Education in Professional Psychology.
Heard, C. P. (2023). Spirituality and Occupation in Living (SOiL) Model: Conceptualizing Occupational Performance Through the lens of Spirituality. The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, 11(3), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.15453/2168-6408.2081
Heard, C., Scott, J., & Yeo, S. (2015). Walking the Labyrinth: Considering Mental Health Consumer Experience, Meaning Making, and the Illumination of the Sacred in a Forensic Mental Health Setting. Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling, 69(4), 240-250. https://doi.org/10.1177/1542305015616102
Heard, C., Scott, J., & Yeo, S. (2022). Eco-spirituality in Forensic Mental Health: A Preliminary Outcome Study. The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, 10(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.15453/2168-6408.1708
Heard C., Scott J., Yeo S. (2022). Spiritual Care Professionals as Unit-Based Interdisciplinary Team Members? Considering Patient and Staff Perceptions in a Forensic Mental Health Care Setting. Journal of Pastoral Care Counseling, 76(2), 139-149. https://doi.org/10.1177/15423050221092317
Mahoney, A., Wong, S., Pomerleau, J. M., & Pargament, K. I. (2022). Sanctification of diverse aspects of life and psychosocial functioning: A meta-analysis of studies from 1999 to 2019. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 14(4), 585–598. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000354
Sprik, P. J., Vanderstelt, H., Valenti-Hein, C., Denton, J., & Ashton, D. (2024). Chaplain interventions and outcomes in outpatient settings: a scoping review. Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/08854726.2024.2357042
Vanderstelt, H., van Dijk, A., and Lasair, S. (2022) Transformational education: exploring the lasting impact of students’ Clinical Psychospiritual Education experiences. Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy, 29(1), 89-104. https://doi.org/10.1080/08854726.2022.2040892
Vieten, C., Fox, J., Oxhandler, H. K., Pearce, M. J., Polson, E. C., Pargament, K. I., Wong, S., & Currier, J. M. (2024). Spiritual and religious competency training for mental health professionals. Counselor Education and Supervision, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1002/ceas.12311
Wong, S., & Pargament, K.I. (2024). The treasure chest: An immersive guided imagery meditation on sacred moments. In S.D. Pressman & A.C. Parks (Eds.), Activities for Teaching Positive Psychology: A Guide for Instructors (Volume 2). American Psychological Association.
Wong, S., Pargament, K. I., & Faigin, C. (2019). Sustained by the sacred: Religious and spiritual resources for resilience in adulthood and aging. In B. Resnick, Gwyther, L.P., & K. Roberto (Eds.), Aging: Concepts, research, and outcomes (pp. 191-214). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04555-5_10
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This spiritual health resource was assembled by the Spiritual Care Department at St. Joseph’s Health Care London. For more information, please call 519 646-6100 Ext. 66029
sjhc.london.on.ca
