Site Mission:

Gwinnett Health System offers a wide variety of services and programs to help make life healthier for people of all ages.

About the Site:

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With roots that go back over sixty years, Gwinnett Hospital System now includes three hospitals plus additional supporting medical facilities. Gwinnett Hospital System, anchored by flagship Gwinnett Medical Center, is a non-profit health care network providing high quality facilities and services to Gwinnett and the surrounding community.

Students visit with families and patients at Gwinnett Medical Center, the main hospital of the Gwinnett Health System. It is a large facility that offers experience in the more suburban setting around Atlanta.

The hours are fairly flexible and students can work on weekends. Students are supported by other chaplain staff as the students visit with families and patients.

A Student's Perspective:

The site-work segment of ConEd was undoubtedly the most formative time of my first year at Candler. As a chaplain on the floor of the Duluth Gwinnett Medical Hospital, I had the opportunity to minister to people of all different faiths or no faith at all. One of the greatest lessons was understanding that I was not there to spiritually “fix” patients, but to listen to them and allow them a chance to reflect and respond spiritually to their circumstance. Listening is something that we all can do and something that is essential to chaplaincy. I am using my experience as a result of my Con Ed experience in many ways. The experience led me to the realization that God will, and is, using me to meet the needs of God's people through pastoral care. I found that the more people I saw, the more the Spirit moved me to want to meet with more. The experience taught me patience, courage to speak to those who are not like me, and the ability to sit quietly with someone who didn’t even speak the same language as I did. God used me in my willingness to simply be present. My site supervisor Lynne, instilled confidence and assured me. She was slow to criticize and quick to praise.

The site was about 45 minutes from the campus, but only 20 minutes from my home so it worked out nicely for me. Many of my classmates carpooled together and were able to have fruitful discussions on the way home.

I would choose this site if I had it to do all over again, because we were treated as chaplains, not as “first year seminary students” or junior chaplains, or chaplains in training. We were it, and it gave us the freedom and the challenge to rise to that calling.