What if You're Doing Everything Right—But Something Is Still Missing?
You provide evidence-based care. You know how to listen. You’ve learned counseling skills and motivational interviewing.
But what do you do when you hear a patient’s deeper struggle—and aren't sure how to respond?
A patient’s concern may not be only about nutrition, medication, or behavior. It may be about grief, fear, loneliness, meaning, purpose, relationships, loss, or hope.
Renewed Practitioner helps dietitians, nurses, and health coaches develop practical, scope-safe spiritual care skills to recognize and respond to what matters most—while staying within their professional role.
Bridge the gap between clinical expertise and human connection.
For Dietitians • Nurses • Health Coaches
Practical Training • Continuing Education • Scope-Safe Tools
What If the Conversation Itself Could Become Part of the Care?
This Is Where Renewed Practitioner Offers Something Different.
Healthcare Can Make Caring Difficult.
You encounter suffering, uncertainty, grief, fear, competing priorities, difficult conversations, and conflict—with patients, families, colleagues, and sometimes within yourself.
You may still provide excellent evidence-based care while wondering what to do when the issue isn't totally all about nutrition, medication, or behavior.
You already know how to listen. Learn what to do with what you hear.
Learn it. Practice it. Bring it into your very next patient encounter.
Spiritual care doesn't require you to become a therapist, chaplain, or religious counselor.
It begins with learning how to notice what is beneath the clinical conversation and respond with curiosity, compassionate presence, and skill.
👁️ NOTICE
Hear what others may miss.
Recognize moments when a patient's story reveals something deeper, like spirituality, that may affect how they cope, heal, or engage in care.
💬 EXPLORE
Discover what matters most to the patient.
Explore the values, meaning, purpose, relationships, hopes, beliefs, and losses shaping the patient's experience.
🤝 SUPPORT
Stay present as a companion in care without needing to fix.
Learn to accompany what emerges without rushing to advise, persuade, or move back to the clinical task.
🌱 INTEGRATE
Bring meaning into the care plan and follow-up activities.
Connect what matters most to the patient with the health goals you're already addressing. Spiritual support reduces systemic inflammation, improves metabolic health, and improves perception of the body.
Learn it. Practice it. Bring it into your very next patient encounter.
What Changes When You Practice This Way?
1. Deeper Patient Connection
Recognize and respond to the human, spiritual, or life-perspective concerns that influence how patients cope, make decisions, find motivation/meaning, and engage in care.
2. Greater Clinical Confidence
Develop practical tools for navigating difficult conversations without stepping outside your professional scope.
3. Renewed Professional Purpose
Through reflection, community, and formation, reconnect with the curiosity, creativity, meaning, and human connection that brought you to healthcare in the first place.
Whole-person care includes the practitioner, too.
This isn't another self-care checklist. Through reflection, community, and practical formation, you'll develop ways to remain present to others without losing yourself in the work.
Meet Mary Gannon Kaufmann
MS, RDN, MA, BCC
Mary brings more than 25 years of experience as a registered dietitian and integrative/functional nutritionist, along with 10 years of experience in spiritual care and chaplaincy.
Her work brings together medical science, nutrition, spiritual care, and human connection.
Mary is a Board-Certified Healthcare Chaplain, Certified Spiritual Director, and the founder of Renewed Practitioner. She has worked across nutrition, diabetes education, eating disorders, hospice and palliative care, hospital chaplaincy, addiction recovery, and professional formation.
She is the author of The Renewed Practitioner: How Spiritual Care Transforms Nutrition, Dietetics & Lifestyle Medicine.
Mary co-authored the American Academy of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) competencies for clinicians in Meaning, Purpose & Spirituality (MPS), published in 2026. See the publication on the Resources Page.
Her passion is helping healthcare professionals develop the skills—and the space—to care for the whole person while remaining grounded in their professional role.
Mary understands both sides of this bridge between clinical care and human connection.
Hear From Practitioners
I think every healthcare professional (especially in the allied fields) should have to take “From Knowledge to Mastery: Spiritual Care Training for Healthcare Professionals”.
We did not get this kind of training in undergraduate school in dietetics, nor did we get it during our dietetic internship to become a Registered Dietitian.
"This course has profoundly changed how I care for clients as a health coach!"
Every nurse needs this training to take in the whole picture of the person. I truly believe that this kind of training and care is what is missing in our healthcare systems. I can't imagine how much more effective "modern medicine" would be if every provider practiced this way.
I will practice taking 2 breaths when the conversation gets heavy, to create space for that emotion to come through. Personally, I think I'm learning to give myself grace and not compare myself to others, especially when their situation could be vastly different from mine. I've really learned to listen rather than speak because sometimes that acknowledgment and that space are all a person needs in this world to feel even an ounce better.
Ready to Bring Whole-Person Care Into Your Practice?
Whether you want self-paced continuing education or an interactive cohort experience, Renewed Practitioner offers practical training to help you move from understanding human issues to actually practicing whole-person spiritual care.
Learn. Practice. Connect. Renew.
Not ready for training?