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

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

Legally, you don't have a leg to stand on if you do something that's expressly forbidden by the code of your job. But there are times when the code could surely be unfair, and it might be morally ok to do something that's forbidden. I'd usually support a casual worker in a low paid job who was rude back to a customer, for instance, since I think that the obligation to be polite at all times is unfair.

In this case, though, I think it probably is right that telling patients you're praying for them is forbidden.

[djm4]

In this case, though, I think it probably is right that telling patients you're praying for them is forbidden.

In this case, though, that wasn't what the nurse was reported as doing (although I realise that she may have been doing that in other cases). I know that looks nitpicky, but to me telling a patient that you're praying for them is in a very different category from asking whether they'd like you to pray for them. On the grounds of non-consensuality, if nothing else. (I realise - from a recent Deadjournal post on the subject, if nothing else - that people's mileage on this may vary.)

I'm not saying that everyone should accept one and not the other; just that if they're wrong, I feel they're wrong for different (sometimes overlapping) reasons. For the record, I feel that telling someone you're praying for them without asking if they'd like you to is generally wrong, and should be forbidden in a carer/patient relationship, and asking if they'd like you to pray for them (but being quite happy to be told 'no') generally isn't wrong, and shouldn't be forbidden. But I accept that it's made more awkward by social pressures not to say 'no' to people offering you help.