Hospital Recruits Reiki Volunteers

When Emerson Hospital, located in the Boston, Massachusetts, suburb of Concord, put out the call in September for volunteer reiki practitioners, the response was “overwhelming,” according Sharon Knox, director of community services for the hospital.

The practitioners agree to a one-year commitment to provide 15-minute sessions to oncology patients in the hospital’s Bethke Cancer Center, one day per week. “Oncology patients are dealing with the issue of throbbing pain and have trouble sleeping and resting,” says Knox. “That’s the population we’ll be focusing on first.”

For the past five years, an in-hospital complementary-therapy group has met to educate nurses and other staff about reiki, massage and other complementary approaches to health, Knox explains. A staff physical therapist, who is also a reiki master, has even certified some of the nurses in levels one and two reiki. “The problem is they don’t have the time to do the reiki service, so we decided to open it up to volunteers,” Knox says.

Patients will receive promotional information about the new reiki service, and volunteers will introduce themselves around the hospital. The goal is to make it available to any patient who wants it, Knox says.

“We hope [the program] will do nothing but continue to grow,” she says.