Photo by Julianna Leopold

ATLANTA—Patients are more than just charts and pills for nurse Kathryn Moore.  

As vulnerable patients adjust to life after open heart surgery, Moore is their nurse, cheerleader and their life coach. She accompanies them in a special program at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital that emphasizes embracing the whole person, with all their physical, emotional and spiritual needs.  

Moore is the hospital’s faith community nursing wellness coach, drawing on both medicine and spirituality to aid people getting back on their feet.  

By guiding newly discharged patients to set meaningful goals, Moore helps them improve their health. She coaches them toward sustainable lifestyle changes that reduce their need to come back to the hospital. 

“You are that physical extension of the Creator, and you are helping to create a better space and a better world and a better life for somebody else,” said the veteran nurse. 

A hospital tradition  

Her role is an outgrowth of an innovative nursing initiative here at Atlanta’s longest-serving hospital. The Sisters of Mercy started the hospital following the Civil War. 

Nurse Kathryn Moore stands in the sun-soaked lobby of Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital. Moore is a faith community nursing wellness coach with the Sylvia Fallon Faith Community Nursing Program. Photo by Julianna Leopold

The hospital has long encouraged its staff to offer both spiritual support and physical care.  

Established in 2016, its faith community outreach program was one of the first in the country to train nurses to partner with patients facing chronic health conditions. 

While the hospital chaplain makes bedside visits, there are hundreds of nurses of many faith traditions and cultural backgrounds trained to offer medical care alongside spiritual care to patients, while in the hospital and after leaving the medical facility.  

The program had to be revised during the COVID-19 pandemic as nurses were stretched thin. Despite these challenges, hospital leaders see the initiative as a critical part of patient care. 

Spirituality has been seen as part of a successful healing process. A report by the McKinsey Health Institute identified how “meaning in one’s life” is key to strong mental, social and physical health.  

The survey of 41,000 people reported that “spiritual health is not a ‘nice to have’ but a core dimension, along with physical, mental, and social health.”  

Terri Burnham, the coordinator for the Faith Community Nurse Navigation initiative, said this program broadens the vision of what is important to achieve a healthy outcome.  

“So often in medicine, the tendency is to get tunnel vision,” said Burnham. “But if the soul and the spirit are not nurtured and healed, they’re not going to be healed.”  

Patient-centric coaching has found success in reducing hospital visits, according to Rebecca Heitkam, who directs the program. In a 2019 article in Nursing Management, Heitkam wrote the initial program’s results showed a 79% reduction in hospital readmissions within 30 days of discharge among the patients categorized as “high utilizers.”  

Gift to continue outreach 

The success of the program has drawn financial support from hospital benefactors. A $500,000 financial gift from the Fallon Family Foundation sustains the program.  

The Fallons, longtime financial supporters of the hospital, previously funded the chapel’s stained-glass window installation. The late Sylvia Fallon volunteered at the hospital for decades and was known for her devotion to the Catholic faith. People remember her fondly for bringing a traditional English tea cart to patients’ rooms, offering tea, baked goods and companionship. With the gift, the program was named the Sylvia Fallon Faith Community Nursing Program. 

Nursing blended with wellness coaching

With the help of the financial gift, since the spring of 2024, Moore’s position as the wellness coach has put her in touch with patients adjusting to a new chapter in life, often following a major health emergency, such as a heart attack or heart surgery.  

The coaching is structured as a 12-week program, during which she talks with them on the phone or video calls.  

“Each week the patient, not me but the patient, gets to be the driver,” Moore said.  

With warmth and encouragement, Moore speaks with her patients, asking about goals, checking on medications, upcoming appointments, reviewing progress toward previous goals. She listens to identify obstacles preventing patients achieving their goal. Together they create a plan to overcome these challenges.  

“Because if we talk about the obstacles now, you’re already anticipating them, and we have a plan for what you’re going to do,” she said about the prevention.  

She’s not shy about providing spiritual support to her patients. It’s been a key part of her nursing training in addition to her faith life as a Christian. Always sensitive to patients and never imposing herself, Moore said if a patient is not seeking prayer, she asks for a moment of silence at the session’s start “to respectfully recognize each other” as an intentional moment. 

Spirituality plays a key role in healing, especially with the emotional and mental challenges of a diagnosis, she said. At Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital, spiritual support begins before the patient leaves when they are first introduced to the program.  

“We connect our hearts and minds in solidarity as we start this journey of healing together,” she wrote in an email. 

Creating goals is highly personal. Some individuals dream of traveling or getting healthy for a family wedding. For others it’s reorganizing a closet, decluttering to ease stress which helps heart health.  

“It doesn’t have to be those typical things. Instead, it can be, for lack of a better word, life-affirming type things that give you pleasure and de-stress you and help you live a fulfilling life,” Moore said.