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

[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.