VA chaplain suspended for counseling

The chaplain at the Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center is being suspended for three days without pay for counseling four VA employees and noting those sessions in the employees’ confidential medical records.

The Rev. George Booker, a retired Army Reserve officer and veteran of the Iraq War, says he was only doing his job and he believes he is being unfairly harassed by a supervisor.

Booker, who has worked for the medical center for more than four years, said the VA Chaplain’s Handbook authorizes him to offer guidance to VA staff, as well as patients and their families, and that he was taught by the VA Chaplain Service to chart every encounter.

“I explained that once I do an encounter, that has to be charted,” Booker said.

But in a June 27 letter informing Booker of his suspension, the associate director for patient services said the chaplain exceeded his authority.

“You are not authorized to provide pastoral services to VA employees. Consequently, your access to, and charting within, their confidential employee health medical records was inappropriate,” states the letter, which was signed by Deborah Miller for associate director Linda Tieaskie.

Tieaskie approved the disciplinary action recommended by Booker’s supervisor, Thomas Reser, chief of social work, who wrote on June 8 that the chaplain had accessed the records of four employees, three of whom “are neither veterans nor patients.” Booker then charted having conducted pastoral services such as grief counseling, spiritual assessment, prayer or Bible study.

“None of the four gave you permission to access their charts,” Reser wrote. “You were not authorized, in the performance of your official duties, to enter, view or record notes in those employees’ confidential medical records.”

However, Booker said that the course guide from the National Chaplain Center in Hampton, Va., stresses that “all events must be charted.”

Booker has the support of his union president who said he is filing a grievance with the medical center administration on the chaplain’s behalf.

“We believe the medical center has supported religious providers ministering to staff, and it is not specified that that work not be documented somewhere as he has done,” said Link Miles, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 1641.

Miles said chaplains are authorized to counsel staff and that Booker felt obliged to document his work as a provider.

“If it was not acceptable that he chart on employees who he has ministered to, that should have been explained to him at some point,” Miles said.

The union president said the government has rules on everything and “to discipline someone to this degree without having a clear rule” is wrong.

In his letter to Booker, Reser noted that the chaplain had been reprimanded in 2010 for failing to follow instructions and lack of candor.

“This past record will be taken into account in determining proper disciplinary action,” Reser wrote.

In a June 20 email, Booker wrote Reser and Tieaskie, citing “constant harassment” by Reser and requesting another supervisor.

Citing privacy concerns, Chuck Marsden, executive assistant to the director of the medical center, declined to comment on Booker’s case on Wednesday. However, as a rule, he said, VA employees are not authorized to access the records of other employees.