Community nurse Caroline Petrie, a Christian nurse from Weston-super-Mare, has been suspended for offering to pray for an elderly patient’s recovery. She asked the patient if she wanted prayer after she had dressed the patient’s wounds. The patient complained to the North Somerset Primary Care Trust. The nurse was suspended, without pay, on 17 December and will find out the outcome of her disciplinary meeting next week.
On one hand, it does seem an over-reaction, not on the part of the of the patient, but on the part of the Health Trust. To someone who doesn’t know the details, I am left wondering why a reprimand from a line-manager and an agreement that the prayer requests wouldn’t happen again, wouldn’t have been sufficient.
I can only conclude that either there are other issues concerning the nurse’s work, and that this is the latest one in a stream of concerns (the prayer that finally broke the camel’s back), or that given the fact that religion is involved, the Trust wants to be seen to be doing the right thing and is trying to ‘cover its back’. For whatever reason, it is costing the Trust a lot of money in replacement wages and in investigation time, and it would be good to know how it is justifying that expense.
As for the nurse herself, I feel that she was very, very wrong to do what she did, regardless of her motives.
- She is blurring the boundaries between professional and personal. As someone who works in a ‘helping profession’ I know that it is sometimes difficult to keep those two separate. However, in requesting the services of a nurse you need to know that you are getting the professional services of a nurse and not those of a friend, or even of a praying friend. As prayer isn’t offered on the NHS, it should not be part of a professional nurse’s services to patients.
- To date, prayer hasn’t been recognised by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) as part of the treatment available on the NHS. In offering prayer in her professional capacity Caroline Petrie is offering an unsubstantiated treatment which has no scientific backing. Anyone else trying to offer such a treatment would be laughed out of court and prevented from doing so.
- Mrs Petrie’s action is an abuse of power. However subtle, there is a power imbalance between a healthy professional and a sick patient. (This has recently been brought home to me during a week’s stay in hospital followed by several visits to a nurses’ clinic. Although a moderately assertive professional male, I felt incredibly vulnerable while being treated, and felt pressure to comply with the health professionals’ wishes.) Mrs Petrie’s patient felt able to resist that request, but was concerned that others might not, which is why she complained. The nurse would doubtless counter by saying that she only asked the patient about prayer and then complied with the her wishes. However, even the request is unnecessary and unjustified pressure and should not have been made.
- Offering prayer risks being extremely offensive. Some people may be happy to comply with it and appreciate it. But others may be offended by it. Asking a member of another religion to be complicit in prayer to the Christian god may be extremely repulsive and distressing. Some atheists may be angered by the presumptions behind such a request. Nurses need to be aware of cultural and religious sensitivities, and prayer is entering into very dangerous territory unnecessarily.
Reports in the press suggest that Mrs Petrie has taken advice from the Christian Legal Centre, which aims to protect the religious freedom of people who follow the Christian faith. I have no problem with Mrs Petrie’s right to religious freedom, but that freedom does not extend to giving her the right to abuse her professional position of power, to offer unscientific treatment, and to blur boundaries between professional and personal.
The fact that until relatively recently Christianity has dominated parts of the culture of the UK is blinding many people to the absurdity of the situation. Many cannot see that what the nurse did was wrong because it is only an extension of common Christian practice. But, imagine the outcry there would probably be if someone from another faith, an evangelical Muslim, for example, were to do something similar. If I were a community nurse and were to offer to do a Morris Dance in front of a patient because I believed it to be effective in promoting the patient’s well-being, I would hope I would be suspended and face discipline.
If I were tasked with defending Mrs Petrie, I might be tempted to point out that prayer is, in some ways, already a sanctioned part of the NHS. Hospitals pay for Chaplains to visit the sick and to offer them prayer. However, that argument could soon be countered. The ‘professionals’ - the Chaplains - not the nurses are allowed to offer prayer and patients expect that from Chaplains, but they don’t expect it from nurses. Given what I have said above about the unscientific nature of the prayer treatment, there is a compelling case to be made for removing Chaplains from hospitals, not for encouraging nurses to offer prayer.
Would I comply if a nurse offered to pray for me? I hope I would point out that I no longer believe in the reality of imaginary friends and resist the waste of time. If it helped the nurse to pray for me at home, that is her business, but if it is my time, my space, my treatment, I would want to resist. Would I complain if a nurse offered to pray for me? I wouldn’t have done so until writing this, but now I feel that I would have a duty to, for the sake of the professionalism of the NHS, and for the well-being of other patients.
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Update 06/02/09 Caroline Petrie has been allowed to return to work as it was acknowledged that she had ‘the best interests of her patients at heart’.
I listened to the interview with this nurse before I left the UK and there was a massive hestitation on her part when she was asked if she had been warned about this before. Apparently she had previously been told she must not give out “prayer cards” to patients.
As a fit person I would shrug this sort of behaviour off - laugh really or say “yeah sure pray if it helps you”. But if I were ill and needy? It’s hard to know. You need to concentrate all your energy into getting better and do not need the complication or guilt of worrying about other people’s beliefs.
I personally think it is inappropriate at best and offensive and upsetting at worst. It certainly has no place in nursing or any workplace. I would complain as I would feel cross if someone said this to me and whilst when I was well, feeling cross would not feel an issue, whilst trapped in hospital it might well do so.
I think there is a history in this particular case (she had clearly been warned previously) and whilst she is prob a good nurse, a sacking was prob the last resort.
What is wrong with country…all gone mad.
You can say no…but if I was ill,I would like a prayer for me.
She didn’t give out the cards did she!!!
Personally, I think the care trust was right to take strong action.
Religious believers always think they are right and their actions proper. (Think back to your own days as a believer.) Suppose the trust had simply given the nurse a verbal warning: she would have gone away thinking “Well, of course, they had to discipline me just for appearances’ sake. They don’t really think me wrong or they would have taken sterner action to stop me.”
By taking strong action, the trust has perhaps nipped such behaviour in the bud and indicated that it is not to be tolerated. For all we know, there may be other personnel behaving in similar ways who haven’t been reported yet, especially if they are strong characters inducing reticence in their clients. Nothing will make them think they are wrong but the threat of suspension may make them desist.
Strong action also tells patients that the trust takes this sort of thing seriously. There may be people who have held back from complaining because they thought they wouldn’t be taken seriously. All being well, they will now be encouraged to stand up for themselves.
Consider also the government’s unseemly in haste entrusting services such as health and education to religious bodies. This surely pushes the risk of “religious abuse” much further than a mere request to pray for the patient. Any policy to counteract this effectively is to be welcomed.
Reluctant Blogger
Interesting information about the prayer cards. I hadn’t heard that. I suspected there was a history because of the scale of the Trust’s response. I agree with you completely about the vulnerability. A loss of health does strange things to you, doesn’t it.
anne
You are, of course, able to have and ask for as much prayer as you want. The issue for me is that it would be completely inappropriate to expect it from a practising health professional.
SilverTiger
Interesting point about the example argument. Perhaps the media attention will discourage similar minded pray-ers from offering their services in future. And perhaps the patient example will encourage more closet atheists to complain too.
I couldn’t agree more with both you and the complainer.
The complainer said that his problem was that perhaps others would find it difficult to refuse the “kind” request, and I agree.
Using a position of authority to impose on another person is wrong even if the offer is, in theory, kind and well-meaning.
I remember that, even as a Christian, I felt abused and imposed on when people preached at me or wanted to pray for me. It happened twice: once with a naturopath and once with a gynecologist. Both times I felt that they were reducing me to the level of a helpless victim who was so pitiful that I couldn’t pray myself. I felt looked down upon and patronized, even though I was a fundamentalist Christian. If they wanted to pray for me, they didn’t have to tell me about it. They could have prayed silently.
How is offering prayer different that offering a hug? I dislike it when people offer to hug me, because there aren’t very many people I want to be hugged by.
Like you, I hope the nurse had been warned before. Any disciplinary action without warning is questionable.
By the way, your picture is quite intriguing. It is nice to look at, for sure. I love the shinny black-and-white figures. But, how does it go with the article? Is is a hospital floor? Doubt it.
Lorena
Interesting point about feeling abused when being prayed for, even as a Christian in a medical context. I’m not too sure too many Christians appreciate how abusive it can feel and would probably justify it along the lines of “It works so I’ll do it anyway. I haven’t got time for the niceties of personal space and choice.”
I think hugging can also be very abusive - even if, like prayer, it is sometimes well-intentioned. I think the same arguments could apply to being hugged in a medical context. A friend, in a private context, can legitimately ask if I want a hug, but in a medical context, it is unprofessional. I want a nurse to be a nurse, not a friend.
Don’t worry too much about the photograph. I have made the decision to include photographs in my blog and the only easy way I can do this legitimately is to use images from the hundreds of my own shots on Flickr. I’m afraid I have limited interests and shots, and it is rarely possible to find a match. When that happens (as it often does) I just choose one and pretend there is a tenuous link. The shot in question was taken in Caffe Nero in Liverpool - it is the ceiling and I turned it upside down. I suppose in the nano second that I thought about it in selecting it for the blog I vaguely thought there might be a link with a cafe in a hospital somewhere, or alternatively that the pools of light in darkness might have some significance. It really is impossible to find decent matches from a limited choice, but at a basic level, a picture - any picture - brightens up the page.
Well Im not sure how the nurse approached it or what her intention was, but as far as the outcome it seems like another example of Political Correctness gone wild. Ive worked in the health field for over 20 yrs so it does seem a tad over the top. What ever happened to just saying “Thanks, but no thanks”.
Yes, the picture does an awesome job of brightening up the page. I agree. It’s a cool photo. I love it, actually. Maybe because I was born in the sixties during the go-go years. It must bring up some warm feeling from way back when my father was alive.
I was wondering about this. I am not religious yet it is not uncommon for me to mention to someone that I will pray for them. Now for me that just means that I will wish them well in whatever challenge they are having. I think it is important that when we hear something from someone, we should determine what their “intent” is. Many times we work from our own bias and then miss out on something nice.
TitforTat
I think I understand what you are saying and, to agree that we need to try to understand what is being said. However, the problem for me is that certain words are very ‘loaded’ and the concept of prayer is one of them. I accept that the word may not be for you, but for several people it is. Working for an organisation like the NHS that has policies on equality and causing offence, prayer could be a dynamite word that should be avoided (in my view).
atm
The challenge is that we all have words that are ‘loaded’, I think it gets difficult trying to communicate when you have to filter every conversation. Im big for personal responsibility, so in my view its up to me to inform someone if they cross a line. Now with that said, there still is some responsibility on the person making the statements. Im just not sure how we go about dishing out the consequence. Definately something to think about. Thanks for your reply.
I have my own blog on this subject, and the views expressed here are pretty much in line with them.
One question I have for those that would defend Petrie: what would you do had Petrie been a practitioner of voodoo and offered to sacrifice a chicken to Baron Samedi? The situation is identical, the only difference being that it is the offering from a member of a ‘cult’ different from the religion most people defending Petrie are members of. I’m sure the defense of ’she had good intentions’ would disappear faster than a twinkie around Michael Moore.
Richard Sloan (in his book Blind Faith) relates a similar and more serious story. A Colorado orthopedic surgeon asks his patients ‘would you mind if was say a prayer?’ Does he ask it several weeks before at the consult? No. Does he ask it several days before during the hospital stay? No. He asks when you are on a gurney being wheeled into the operating room! Why ask at all? Why not just go pray in private?
I don’t know about you folks, but I would be terminating the doctor/patient relationship immediately at this point. I prefer my doctors to trust in their skills first, foremost and only. People do not realize in just how great a position of power a health care worker has over a patient and to make such a request of anyone in such a vulnerable position oversteps the bounds of trust in the relationship. There is no gray area here.
shamelesslyatheist
I agree, the voodoo analogy is powerful. The acceptability (even at a low, thoughtless level) of Christianity within the culture is blinding people to the reality of what is happening.
Shamelesslyatheist
Sorry, big difference between asking to say a prayer and cutting a chickens head off. And there may be no gray in your world in regards to this but there sure is lots in mine. In fact Im not even fazed if the person wanted to do the chicken in so long as we barbecue it later.
Shameless, whats your blog site?
The only difference (except to the chicken, of course) is that one is widely accepted and the other is not. There is no difference whatsoever in intent (or efficacy - prayer is well known to have none).
Religion is simply ethically out of bounds for health care workers and every one I know (I do work at a hospital), religious or not, understands this. If Petrie wants to make changes to standards of care (for which she is quite unqualified) she is free to choose another career path.
As for myself, I would make it quite clear to her that what she was doing was unprofessional (I really don’t think that there is any question of that here) and overstepping the bounds of her duties. As such, I would terminate any relationship with her and report the incident to the hospital. But that’s me. I hold a strong opinion on the matter - religion has no place in health care. In fact, I think it’s potential for disaster should the two mix is huge. Others, even if they share my view, may feel pressured by such a request due to the balance (or rather the imbalance) of power and acquiesce, even though they would feel abused by such a request. And that is the crux of where this ‘mind if we say a prayer?’ thing crosses the line to unethical.
Blogsite is http://shamelesslyatheist.wordpress.com/