VA North Texas Chaplain services

Chaplain Staff 

Our chaplains help patients and family members through outpatient treatment, hospital stays, and extended care. If needed, they will contact your personal clergy or spiritual care provider in the community. Our chaplains are clinical pastoral care specialists who provide religious and non-religious people with services such as:

Bereavement (grief and loss) care

Sacraments (communion and sacrament of the sick)

Bereavement (grief and loss) care

Clinical Pastoral Education

Comfort and counseling

Spiritual Literature

Final Roll Call/Memorial Services

Prayer

Worship

Employee Support

Whole Health

Spiritual and religious services

Chaplain Service is based at the Dallas VA Medical Center. However, chaplains work in locations throughout the metroplex, such as Fort Worth, Bonham, and Garland.

Our chaplains are on-site seven days a week for spiritual care from 7:30 to 4:00 p.m., but you can reach chaplains 24 hours a day. 

After hours, our chaplains respond to calls from home to provide spiritual support for Veteran deaths and other emergency needs.

Our chaplains help patients and family members through outpatient treatment, hospital stays, and extended care. If needed, they will contact your personal clergy or spiritual care provider in the community. Our chaplains are clinical pastoral care specialists who provide religious and non-religious people with services such as:

• Bereavement (grief and loss) care

• Final roll call/memorial services

• Sacraments (communion and sacrament of the sick)

• Bereavement (grief and loss) care

• Clinical pastoral education

• Comfort and counseling

• Spiritual literature

• Prayer

• Worship

• Employee Support

• Whole Health

Bereavement care:

Bereavement care is a best practices model that accompanies a Veteran’s grieving family and loved ones for 13 months immediately after the Veteran’s death. The purpose is to assist the bereaved in learning how to say goodbye in ways that are meaningful for them and, ultimately, in ways that are healing as well.

The Bereavement Care Coordinator (BCC) makes phone calls within two weeks, at 30 days, and every quarter following a loss. In addition, they provide additional grief and bereavement resources specific to the griever’s needs. We ensure that no one is forgotten during the holidays regardless of where they fall within the 13-month cycle.

An essential aspect of bereavement care is education:

• Normalizing the grieving process
• Providing helpful spiritual information and tools for adults
• Children and grandchildren
• Anyone grieving the loss of the Veteran

Another component of bereavement support is the recognition of types of complicated grief and guiding the bereaved toward professional help as appropriate.  

Final roll call & memorial service:

In addition, the bereavement care program incorporates a last roll call ceremony of remembrance as a public honoring of those whose earthly journey has ended.

Quarterly, Veteran families and loved ones can participate in a live memorial service that lifts the names of those we have lost. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, services were recorded and sent to families with a link to view the service from their homes. 

We honor our nation’s Veterans and those that care for them by providing bereavement care, reminding those with heavy hearts that they are not alone.

Telehealth & virtual care

• Chaplains are available virtually by appointment or provider consult

Worship services

People of all faiths and traditions are invited to attend. Please call the chaplain office for days and times these services are offered.

Protestant Christian Inter-denominational Services: Sunday

Catholic Mass: Coming soon

Islamic: Coming soon

Holidays:  Most holidays have special opportunities for worship as well.

Benefits

Research shows that spiritually active patients experience or report:

• Faster healing
• Greater coping skills
• Reduced pain
• Better quality of life

Contact a chaplain

Please contact Chaplain Service at 817-335-2202.

Interfaith Chapel/Mediation Room

Dallas VA Medical Center Chapel
Building 1A
Room N-503
Map of Dallas campus
Hours: Coming soon!

Sam Rayburn Memorial Veterans Center Chapel
Building 2
Room 140
Map of Sam Rayburn campus
Hours: Coming soon!

VA Fort Worth Outpatient Clinic Meditation Room
Room 1N-505
Hours: Open to the public during Fort Worth Outpatient Clinic Open hours. 

Fort Worth Outpatient Clinic (FWOPC) Chaplain Office  

Chaplains at the FWOPC are available to: provide support to you and your family, listening to you and your family, respecting what you have been through; help with decision-making;  support and work with you to answer tough questions; perform religion-specific ceremonies or services, such as meditation, prayer, reading holy texts; help with feelings of guilt and self-forgiveness; help you connect or reconnect with God or a higher power. Chaplains at FWOPC provide individual spiritual support visits in-person, by telephone and virtual via VA Video Connect. Chaplains at FWOPC also provide spirituality group support for grief groups virtually by VA Video Connect.

Sam Rayburn Memorial Veterans Center (SRMVC) Chaplain Offices

Chaplains at the SRMVC are available to: provide support for you and your family, listening to you and your family, respecting what you have been through; help with decision-making;  support and work with you to answer tough questions; perform religion-specific ceremonies or services, such as worship, meditation, prayer, reading holy texts; help with feelings of guilt and self-forgiveness; help you develop or redevelop your relationship with God or a higher power. Chaplains at SRMVC also provide individual outpatient spiritual support visits in-person and by telephone. Chaplains at SRMVC also facilitate Spirituality Group support for Domiciliary resident Veterans with chemical dependency and/or post-traumatic stress or military sexual trauma.  Chaplains also offer spiritual support for Veteran residents of the CLC.

Sam Rayburn Memorial Veterans Center (SRMVC) Chaplain Offices:

Building 2

Room 141-2-B

Building 29, Community Living Center (CLC)

Room B2103-29-B

 

Chaplain George E. Cooper, Ph. D.

            (xt36280)

Chaplain Abel Ramirez, M. Div.

            (xt36209)

Chaplain Jermaine Robertson, M. Div.

            1 (xt36281)

Clinical Pastoral Education Program

Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is interfaith professional education for ministry. It brings theological students and ministers of all faiths (pastors, priests, rabbis, imams and others) into supervised encounter with persons in crisis. Out of an intense involvement with persons in need, and the feedback from peers and teachers, students develop new awareness of themselves as persons and of the needs of those to whom they minister. From theological reflection on specific human situations, they gain a new understanding of ministry. Within the interdisciplinary team process of helping persons, they develop skills in interpersonal and inter-professional relationships.

CPE Students (acpe.edu)

Why CPE?

Clinical Pastoral Education offers the religious leaders  the opportunity to develop their counseling and spiritual care skills while under the supervision of an expert spiritual care clinician. As the chaplain student assists the Veteran and his/her family to make use of their spiritual resources to cope with illness, trauma and end of life issues, the chaplain explores his/her personal and professional barriers that inhibit providing a relationship of empathy and compassion. Within the diversity of the Veteran population and peer group interaction the cleric has the opportunity to reflect upon how he/she/they lives out his/her/their theology or religious philosophy.

Who can apply?

Clinical Pastoral Education is post-graduate, professional education for both clergy and lay persons who are desire to develop their skills in the art of spiritual care.  The full-time, year-long stipend program requires that students:

• Be ordained or endorsed to ministry by an approved endorsing body
• Have completed a Graduate Level Master of Divinity from an approved and accredited school of theology or seminary,
• Have completed at least one prior unit of CPE (though that can be waived for certain persons), and
• Must be a U.S Citizen

How to apply:

VANTHCS accepts an ACPE CPE application (CPE Application). Complete and submit the application face sheet and the essays required of the application. The essays should demonstrate your abilities to reflect upon the life events and relationships in which you have experienced and how they have formed you as a spiritual care provider. All of the essays will be evaluated for their content and demonstration of readiness to enter this method of education.

The CPE Program at VANTHCS is accredited to provide Level I/II and Certified Educator training,  CPE by the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE):

ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care and Education
55 Ivan Allen Jr. Blvd., Suite 835
Atlanta, GA 30308
Phone: 404-320-1472
https://acpe.edu/

For an application:  CPE Application

For more information or to apply for CPE at VANTHCS, please contact:

Chaplain Robin D. Booth, M. Div.; DMin. ACPE Certified Educator, BCC

Director, Clinical Pastoral Education

VA North Texas HCS/Chaplain Service (125)

4500 S. Lancaster Rd.

Dallas, TX 75216

 

; robin.booth@va.gov.

Chaplain service contact info

Chaplains can be reached 7 days a week 7:30am to 4:30pm at #71070

After hours and on holidays, to reach the on-call chaplain, please call the AOD #71340 who will page the chaplain.

Please provide the following information to the AOD:

• the name of the patient, the last 4, and room number.
• The patient’s religious preference (in particular, is the patient Roman Catholic or Protestant)
• The unit’s point of contact and extension

The chaplain will then call the unit to gather additional information before returning to the hospital.