Praying nurses

[ciphergoth]

Nurse suspended without pay for offering to pray for a patient during a home visit - what do you think?

(Snowed in today, trying to work from home but it's not really a workplace atmosphere around here today :-)

Updated: the patient is described as a Christian in the article. One wonders if this means Christian as in really a Christian, or "Christian I suppose" which AFAICT is the majority religion of the UK. Updated: actually "have Christian beliefs myself" is more like the phrasing I'd expect from someone who takes it seriously.

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I think the nurse shouldn't have done it, and that it is a disciplinary matter.
I think that suspension without pay seems incredibly excessive for a first offence. Of course this nurse may have received endless warnings about this sort of thing.
I think I generally don't like it when people complain because *someone else* might be offended - it drives me up the wall that people do this so much at BiCon.
I think I prefer "Would you like me to pray for you?" to "I'll pray for you", but not by much. For some reason, "You'll be in my prayers" winds me up a lot less.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

It's at least her second offence.

Plus, the prayer studies have shown that patients do worse when they know someone is praying for her.

[andrewducker]

Oooh - can you give me more info on that?

The stuff I've seen shows a mild positive effect when they know they're being prayed for - but I can't find any of that either!

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

New Scientist has reported studies that showed that a couple of times IIRC, tried looking there?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes - "Petrie said she had been reprimanded over her faith before, in October, when she gave a homemade prayer card to an elderly patient."

It probably warrants another disciplinary hearing and a written warning, but suspension without pay still seems over the top when the second offense is far less egregious than the first. OTOH as I say we may not know the whole story - if there's a string of occasions then eventually you do get to this stage.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

It's not so much suspension without pay as that, being a bank nurse, she gets paid for jobs she's sent on and they're not sending her on any...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

That does make a big difference. Still, down with casualization!

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Surely that makes it even harsher? If she was salaried and suspended without pay pending an investigation she would at least have a chance of getting the lost wages paid once the suspension was over.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's not necessarily any fairer in an absolute sense, just a lot more commonplace.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

I agree - she shoudln't have done it and as the patient says in that article, an offer of prayer could be interpreted as the patient being in a very bad way. But suspension sounds most excessive for a first time.

The thing with 'I'll pray for you' is there's no polite way to disagree - "I'd really rather you didn't" doesn't go down well.

At least things have improved in the NHS - when I was born my mother was explicitly told that if I wasn't baptised I wouldn't live through the night. For years she wanted to take me back to the hospital and do "ner ner na ner ner" - but then my parents did eventually decide to name me after the guardian angel while hoping for the best...

[wildbadger.livejournal.com]

I agree, but also think it depends to some extent on the nature of the interaction. Offers of prayer can be either sincere expressions of goodwill, or quite unpleasant and manipulative.

Compulsory religion in schools concerns me far more, as the audience is equally captive.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

That's different, they're children - who gives a damn what they want so long as their voting parents get what they want?

[henry_the_cow]

LJ says "(Reply to this)(Parent)" which in this instance I take as an instruction...

Generally, parents get little say about the religion taught in schools, unless they send their children to a faith-based school, or cause them embarrassment by insisting that they don't attend assembly/RE classes/whatever. (Come to think of it, I don't even know if that's an option in our school).

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

heh... I guess I was mainly thinking of religious schools - I forgot about the compulsory daily act of worship.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/02/nurse-prayer-suspended refers to a previous similar incident: Petrie said she had been reprimanded over her faith before, in October, when she gave a homemade prayer card to an elderly patient. She said: "He was delighted with it, but his carer was not."

I think that suspension without pay still seems excessive. But can't she just pray to get her job back?

[prolificdiarist.livejournal.com]

I think that suspension without pay still seems excessive. But can't she just pray to get her job back?

Hahaha, brilliant :)

Kx