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

[runesandmen.livejournal.com]

Difficult, I do agree with cookwitch above, you don't need to tell someone that you are going to pray for them. My mother regularly prays for patients. She never tells them though. Just sends little prayers up from time to time. Faith tends to be a fairly private and personal thing that you don't really talk about in work but it affects every part of your life, including work but in a private way. That probably didn't make any sense, sorry. Saying a wee prayer at the end of your working day in private won't really do anyone any harm but talking about it could be offensive to people of different faiths/no belief so prayer-offering was a bit clumsy.

There are dedicated people in medicine to support people in a spiritual way, ie hospital chaplains. You always get the option of seeing one as an inpatient and they do good work. Probably best to leave it to them and have the nursing treatment religion-free. I know the patient in question is being treated in the community so that's not really the issue but if she was wanting spiritual support, which she clearly didn't, referring her to such a dedicated professional, such as her own minister, would be the best plan.