PeaceHealth

A sense of service

For 119 years, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace have been providing healthcare to communities in the Pacific Northwest. They helped launch the Catholic healthcare ministry in New Jersey, which has grown to include five hospitals in Washington, Oregon, Alaska and even internationally in British Columbia, Canada. In this health issue, ABJ spotlights the private, not-for-profit organization with a holistic bedside manner.

On August 3, 1890, two members of the fledgling Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace left their convent in Newark, New Jersey, headed for a remote logging community in the coun­try’s far northwest corner—a place called Fairhaven, Washington. Their goal was to es­tablish a hospital to care for loggers, mill workers, fisherman and their families.

A heritage of healing

Not only was the opening of St. Joseph Hos­pital well-received, but its establishment drew in workers from the Catholic healthcare ministry for more than a century. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and their lay colleagues still serve in the facility. The order’s founder, Mother Francis Clare, had a progressive attitude and reformist zeal that often put her at odds with the Church’s hierarchy. Irish-born activist and nun Clare be­came internationally recognized for her work and writing on behalf of women and the poor.

By the roaring 1920s, the spirit that de­fined and launched the healthcare ministry in Fairhaven, Washington had grown to include five hospitals in Washington, Alaska and Or­egon. About 40 years ago, the Sisters decided to form a separate structure to oversee their hospital services in order to meet the chal­lenges of contemporary healthcare. In 1976, they consolidated the various healthcare min­istries into a private, not-for-profit system, adopting the name PeaceHealth in 1994 to better reflect the mission and heritage.

To this day, the religious community remains committed to its founder’s vision of achiev­ing peace through social justice in its life and ministries. The Sisters have entrusted their lay colleagues with the important mission of carrying on the spiritual healing and excep­tional medical care in a gracious and compas­sionate manner to all those that seek care.

Well-rounded services offered

Today, PeaceHealth operates seven hospi­tals, several medical groups, a chemical depen­dency program, healthcare joint ventures and other services in southeast Alaska, Washing­ton, northwest Oregon, as well as Oregon’s Willamette Valley and its central coast.

Headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, a system board sets overall direction, but each of the five regions has its own local governing board with responsibility to set local policy. The regions are also tied by a shared mission and values. “Our promise guides what we do and how we go about doing it. It is relationship-centered based on the ethic that everything in the environment affects recovery and healing. Very little is neutral; almost everything can either enhance or impair the healing process,” the hos­pital administration announced on its website.

Guiding principles are their vision

From a traditional faith perspective, Peace­Health integrates healing with holistic bedside manner, compassionate care and excellent medi­cal care. “There is a focus on the physical, emo­tional, and spiritual as we provide highly reliable, safe clinical treatment, striving to use the best that technology and science can provide,” said a hospital statement. “Faith gives us strength and guides us as we develop our models of care in service to our patients and families and how we hire and respond to the needs of our care­givers and facility infrastructure designs.”
This guiding set of principles ensures a promise, that every PeaceHealth patient receives safe, evi­dence-based, compassionate care. It combines the science and art, the head and heart, of their health­care ministry. “PeaceHealth is defined by its spirit, which is rooted in our rich history and heritage, as well as our mission, vision, and values. But most of all, PeaceHealth is defined by the spirit of our caregivers. The greatest gift that we can bring to our patients and families is who we are and how we work together for the healing and wholeness for those who come to us for care,” says Sister Sheila Lemieux, board chair at PeaceHealth.

Philosophy in action

At PeaceHealth, faith and medicinal healing are more than intertwined, they are one. Here is a brief overview of the guiding principles.

Renewal Experience

A two-day retreat offered to employees through the Center for Mis­sion and Renewal. Jim Self, M.D., of PeaceHealth Medical Group, says of the experience: “I have been reminded in a very personal way of the reasons why I became a physician.”

No One Dies Alone

No One Dies Alone is a volunteer program that provides the reassur­ing presence of a companion to dying patients who would otherwise be alone. With the support of the nursing staff, companions are thus able to help provide patients with that most valuable of human gifts: a dignified death.

Bridge Assistance

As part of the mission to provide medical services to those in need, PeaceHealth instituted Bridge Assistance which offers healthcare ac­cess to the uninsured and underinsured, with the promise that neces­sary and emergency healthcare will never be delayed by requests for financial or other information regarding ability to pay.

Lane Workforce Partnership

Working with Lane Workforce Partnership, Oregon Medical Laborato­ries submitted and received a $130,000 grant to develop a healthcare career resource center, train individuals for entry level laboratory posi­tions and establish a distance-learning program for medical labora­tory technicians and clinical laboratory scientists.

Exceptional care in a sacred environment

“All of the art work at St. John Medical Center can be appreciated as art, yet it goes beyond that. It gives people a chance to pause and reflect. We want to lift people’s spirits. Meditating on art allows a person to move beyond self-to know that there is healing and some­thing beyond what he or she is experiencing right now. Art also brings something to the human spirit that is timeless, that reaches across cultures,” says Retha Porter of Lower Columbia Region PeaceHealth.

Management agrees there is a special healing environment at PeaceHealth.

“To create a healing environment is to make a commitment to focus more time and resources toward reigniting the spirit of individuals and strengthening the soul of our organization to continuously im­prove care for our patients by taking better care of ourselves,” says Judy Hodgson, senior vice-president of organizational development at PeaceHealth. 

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