A Parish Nurse is a registered nurse also called a faith community nurse assists congregational (church) members gain or maintaining the maximum spiritual, mental, or physical health. Find out if parish nursing is the best route for you!

How to Become a Parish Nurse Guide

Table of Contents

Quick Summary

Parish Nurses are registered nurses that provide health and wellness services for faith-based communities (church, ministry, or mosque) around the world. Many Parish Nurses belong to a church and help provide health education, disease prevention, and health counseling under the direction of the church.

Their role within the church helps them to achieve these goals by serving as a health educator, referral agent, health advisor, volunteer leader, personal health counselors, health advisors, and group organizers.

Recommended Degree Level: Bachelors of Science Degree with a concentration in Nursing

License required: Unrestricted Registered Nursing License (RN).

Certification Available: No known certification exists for Parish Nursing

How much does a Parish Nurse earn? The Median annual salary is $67,490*

 

What does a Parish Nurse do?

Their role within the church helps them to achieve these goals by serving as a health educator, referral agent, health advisor, volunteer leader, personal health counselors, health advisors, and group organizers.

Parish Nurses do not provide traditional medical treatment, such as taking a member’s blood, providing immunizations (flu shots), or any other invasive nursing procedures. Because the Parish Nurse’s job is limited and they do not provide hands-on nursing treatment, they focus more on prevention services for members.

Some Parish Nurses may work with other health advocates, community volunteers, and health workers with hopes of providing a team ministry approach. To meet the needs of the congregation members.

Parish Nursing job duties may include:

  • Prayer for and with fellow members who may be sick with diseases or illness.
  • Providing community referrals of health care providers/services/ available resources.
  • Developing support groups
  • Organizing and leading healthcare promotion programs/ screenings (such as high blood pressure screenings or flu shots).
  • health counseling for individuals, families, groups, or married couples
  • Home visits with members such as the elderly, physically challenged, or sick.
  • Treatment Planning
  • Crisis Intervention

Instead, their focus is to promote better health, healing, and wellness of the whole person, not just the illness. They do this by providing services that help to improve congregational members’ minds, bodies, and spirits.

A Parish Nurse may view Healing and Health more spiritually. The Health of a congregational member within the eyes of a Parish Nurse might be regarded as the absence of disease within the body and as having a sense of spiritual well-being. This spiritual well-being may be viewed as being physically socially, psychologically in addition to being in harmony with one’s self, the environment, all people, and God.

Healing through the eyes of some Parish Nurse could be viewed as having a sense of well-being within the member’s mind, body and spirit even if physical healing may not be occurring.

 

What education will I need to become a Parish Nurse?

Parish nursing requires you first to be a Registered Nurse (RN). To become a Parish Nurse you will need to complete a nursing program. This could be accomplished with an Associates’s Degree in Nursing (ADN), or you could opt for a four-year Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing (BSN). Both routes allow you to sit for the NCLEX-RN state examination to apply for your nursing license within your home state.

 

Career Outlook

The career outlook appears very bright for Parish Nurses. Currently, there is a nursing shortage across the United States which brings the need for RNs a valuable career to get into. As the population increases in the number of older persons, 65 or over so will the rapid demand for Parish Nurses will continue to soar.

Read also –How to Become a Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) Guide

Check out our other Nursing School Guides.

 

References

https://www.census.gov/