Exorcism in the ER......NOT

Specialties Emergency

Published

Had a pt come in the other night, female about 40 y/o. She was brought in by her husband and her pastor. She was dragged from the car by them and placed in a wheelchair, and was then intercepted and directed straight to the back. This lady was unresponsive, yet SPO2 was 99 on RA, NSR, good pressure, and a very good corneal reflex. Hmmmmm...we all said. Got a line in her, o2 on her, and then it was off to CT, which was totally normal. Drug screen was negative, all labs were normal....hmmmmmmm, we go again. As she was lying there, her hubby would grab her hand and start talking what sounded like gibberish and you could see her eyes move under her closed lids,....hmmmmmmm we go again. We did a couple of hand drops and never did her hand come close to her face,......hmmmmm we go, this is getting better and better. After a shory while (about 45 min), the pastor returned and both him and the husband started chanting together while running their hands in the air above her body.... by this time we had quit going hmmmmmmmm...just started to :rolleyes: .

This lady remained in an unresponsive state, and then the pastor and husband confided that she may have become possessed :devil: by a demon! I even kept a straight face when he told me that. What was the real kicker was they wanted us to call in a Catholic priest so that he could perform an exorcism on her right there in the ER, before the :devil: became so strong in her it would not be able to be exorcised.

Well, to make a long story short, NO, we did not call a priest. We admitted her to the floor due to altered loc. The floor nurses said they kept up the vigil most of the night, except when they thought there was no one near. Then she would come out of her "trance" and talk to her hubby. Somehow, someone was able to convince a priest to come in the next day, whether he did an exorcism or not is unknown, but she had a miraculous recovery and was able to leave that evening. So the

:devil: lost another one and the good guys once again prevailed in the fight between good and evil......I think.

bob

Specializes in Emergency Nursing Advanced Practice.

I work in the ER of a once secular hospital that recently merged with a Catholic hospital. The admissions staff calls me "The Great Satan". A finer moniker could not be bestowed.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
....ummm, no i'm just a little ole lpn in a little ole med surg unit. and i didn't take it seriously, i just didn't think it was that funny. sorry.

so, since you are comming back to this, let me elaborate...

i wasn't around thirty years ago (as a matter of fact i was just born around that time) and on top of that in a different country, so i don't know if the ethics of nursing were somehow different then, but to be honest i thought that you are making this up.... so it is more shocking to me, if this is infact true, as it seems from your second post.... not the fact that it is in fact cruel (you yourself were vividly describing how painfull it is to get such an h2o injection), very judgemental and presumptive, but more so the fact that in this day and age a nurse would think this kind of practice is agreeable...

and it is still illegal and still not therapeutic...nor is it moral or ethical.... and not funny either.... sorry once again. :rolleyes:

i guess you're too young, then, to have developed a sense of humor. after being a nurse about as long as you've been alive -- or longer -- i can tell you that it's far more fun to laugh at things than to become judgemental about them! lighten up and laugh a little -- you'll last longer!

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
just how does an humorous story become a "flame" thread?

granted, exorcisms in er may not be in everyones perverted funny bone but can't we let folks have a few laughs and take it with a grain of salt?

because some folks have absolutely no sense of humor, and cannot restrain themselves from posting about something they don't get!

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

The thread is 3 years old. No sense insulting each other over such an old and (to me, anyhow) dubious story.... :rolleyes:

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I've read the whole thread (I'm a bit more awake now as opposed to when I posted last night) and there's something that I don't get.

The OP described something like speaking in tongues. That USUALLY goes along with pentacostal teachings. So why did they want to call in a Catholic priest instead of following their own teachings for something like this? (whatever it might be in their book)

Talk about a waste of everyone's resources. Not only the ED, but the chaplain's office, if not a Catholic hospital a priest might have been called in. I'm really glad that there was a wise doc on that night who said "no" to calling a priest in.

I think that someone had the right idea in removing the husband and priest from the room and presenting the negative findings to the woman and respectfulling giving her some options.

Wow, that sounds like they wasted lots of people's time and money. :rolleyes:

As a Pentecostal Christian myself, I doubt this pastor and couple were part of any recognized Pentecostal denomination or sect. In fact, in some independent churches the pastors have little theological or other education.

I have had some experience myself with "deliverance ministry" - praying with people to free them from spiritual oppression. I have seen people set free from depression, eating disorders, and addiction with the help of this ministry done by TRAINED and discerning individuals.

This woman definitely sounds like an attention-seeker, more than someone who genuinely wants to be free from a spiritual bondage. Unfortunately, an inexperienced but well-meaning pastor can be taken in by such a woman and in turn enable her mal-adaptive behavior. I would guess that this pastor had no training in deliverance and no connection with any other churches (such as a denomination) if he was calling for a Catholic preist.

Done properly, deliverance ministry is done with the COOPERATION of the person being ministered to. It is done in a way that preserves the dignity of the individual seeking help (which this case obviously did not), and does not encourage bizarre behaviour. Definitely not anything like out of The Exorcist or resembling this scenario.

ITs unfortunate that this whole scenario wasted the ER's and hospital's resources, unless the woman got the psychiatric help that she needed in the first place. Somehow I suspect she did not and will be bothering another pastor and/or hospital (not to mention her husband).

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because some folks have absolutely no sense of humor, and cannot restrain themselves from posting about something they don't get!

i couldn't agree more! keep the thread alive. if you take away our ability to vent then you take away our sanity.

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that is why there are numerous other threads to view. you have a choice as we all do.

insults? insults are for the paranoid. they should immediatly shut off thier computers and go to the book store and buy the book "the four agreements" by miguel ruiz! :coollook: :rotfl: :)

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Specializes in Psych.
I'm very comfortable with respecting the belief systems of different cultures, I just don't think that this qualifies.

After all, the Catholic church itself is very reluctant to claim that people are possessed, or to perform exorcisms. So much so that I doubt you could get a priest to perform an exorcism on a newly-presenting patient with altered LOC FI.

And if there was a pastor there I'm don't get why (given that he clearly favoured the exorcism concept) he didn't call in a favour with the archdiocese and skip a hospital admit altogether. After all, if you don't think there's a medical problem why would you present to a medical centre?

Given that the patient recovered without an exorcism (or, from the sounds of it, any other curative treatment), I think that heaping scorn upon the idea of stanic possession, at least int his case, isn't exactly unwarranted. Positing conversion disorder or attention-seeking behaviour seem pretty accurate as well :)

Yeah, really, why didn't the pastor call the priest BEFORE the EXPENSIVE trip to the ER? And, couldn't the ER staff have called the pastoral care dep't. to see if they could assess the situation and call in a priest if necessary(tongue in cheek) BEFORE the pt is admitted to an inpatient unit (read: more unnecessary expense). I'm curious, was the pt insured? Who picked up the bill for this fiasco? I work in an inpatient psych unit in a community hospital and I am afraid this would have been one admitted to our service if not deferred previously. Or maybe, talk of a psych admission would have been the "cure" she needed and she would have walked out of the ER. It's sad that this stuff happens as much as it does, and there are still people who actually NEED medical care and can't get it due to lack of funds. What a world we're living in!

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Specializes in Psych.
I had a 14 year old boy in the ED chanting, "I am the devil!". We had his mother and the guards following him around, to the bathroom ect. Every time he passed one of us he did his little chant. On one particular pass when the guards weren't too close, I whispered "Nothing a good spanking wouldn't cure!"

He didn't give us one bit more trouble (at least in the ED).

Ya know . . . Even though I feel your assessment and intervention were spot on, you really put yourself at risk for a lawsuit IMHO, especially considering this child's mother brought him to the ER rather than consulting clergy or using your intervention at home. If I'm not mistaken, assault is defined as the threat of harm. Not PC, just practical.

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Specializes in Psych.
THIS IS WHAT THEY MAKE RAPID SEQUENCE INTUBATION FOR!!!!!

Would that be legal considering there was no medical reason for it, same question for the poster who suggested a soap suds enema. Is this battery?

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Specializes in Psych.
As a Pentecostal Christian myself, I doubt this pastor and couple were part of any recognized Pentecostal denomination or sect. In fact, in some independent churches the pastors have little theological or other education.

I have had some experience myself with "deliverance ministry" - praying with people to free them from spiritual oppression. I have seen people set free from depression, eating disorders, and addiction with the help of this ministry done by TRAINED and discerning individuals.

This woman definitely sounds like an attention-seeker, more than someone who genuinely wants to be free from a spiritual bondage. Unfortunately, an inexperienced but well-meaning pastor can be taken in by such a woman and in turn enable her mal-adaptive behavior. I would guess that this pastor had no training in deliverance and no connection with any other churches (such as a denomination) if he was calling for a Catholic preist.

Done properly, deliverance ministry is done with the COOPERATION of the person being ministered to. It is done in a way that preserves the dignity of the individual seeking help (which this case obviously did not), and does not encourage bizarre behaviour. Definitely not anything like out of The Exorcist or resembling this scenario.

ITs unfortunate that this whole scenario wasted the ER's and hospital's resources, unless the woman got the psychiatric help that she needed in the first place. Somehow I suspect she did not and will be bothering another pastor and/or hospital (not to mention her husband).

Thank you for this intelligently written perspective.

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Specializes in Psych.
i would have performed the mandatory 2 minute vigorous sternal rub, and gotten an order for a soap suds enama from the md stat!

I'm a psych nurse becoming an ER nurse, i think the jobs coalesce well....

anyway, i've had several "catatonic" schizophrenics on the ward that respond very well to the lenghtened sternal rub... up and walking a half hour later... it's a miracle.. hallelujuh brother....

A word of caution: The truly catatonic are TRULY DANGEROUS when they come out of thier stupor. Psych RN here, been there, done that. Accepted practice is stat IM antipsychotic and be ready w/extra personnel when they snap out of it, because they are going to fight like the devil (sorry, couldn't resist) when the meds take effect. You've been warned.

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