religion in the workplace

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There was a ghost story thread about posessed people dying and taunting the nurses after begging them not to let them die. It inspired the question: How many of you are religious, and do you ever offer to pray for or with a patient whose frightened of dying?

Specializes in ICU, L&D, Home Health.
elrondaragorn said:
Whether or not prayer helps is not the question. Some people believe there are things called demons that other people may pray to, not knowing they are being decieved into thinking they are praying to a benevolent being. Such a patient believes that even if a person who prayed to such a demon to help them, they will be spiritually harmed. The person doing the praying may not believe they are being decieved, may think the patient's concern is ridiculous, and unfortunately, in todays world, too many people have been taught that there are no absolute truths. Consenquently, if there are no absolute truths and some yoga master insists fire can't hurt you, I don't think you'd want that person as your doctor. It is however possible to know there are absolute truths, what they are, and that there is good and evil (I'd be happy to explain further but I'd have to start a philosophy thread in the off topics section) Too make a long story short, though, if someone knows that something is good for someone, such as excercise, for example, they would be disrespectful by forcing the person to get excecise, but if they persist in encouraging this behavior, the patient will feel much better. If there are scientific truths that can be known, there are moral and spiritual truths that can also be known, and if I as your patient know your prayer will harm me, I don't want you to say that prayer!

You have mentioned people being influenced by demons more than once- I am curious as to whether you believe this is true. I knew a gal in nursing school who felt our psychiatric patients were more susceptible to being "influenced by demons" and was therefore afraid to interact with them.

As for myself, I do enjoy a nice rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on occasion, but prefer to keep my fantasy and reality firmly separate.

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Specializes in Cardiac, ER.

Ok,.queenjean,..sooo,.perhaps I should stick to my "general ER Trauma" speech,.."hello queenjean, my name is Rn and I'm one of the nurses who will be taking care of you while you're in the ER. There is going to be alot of people in and out of the room, alot of things going on really quickly,.try not to be scared, I'll try my best to keep you informed of what is going on and we will do our best to make you as comfortable as we can,we are going to take good care of you,,...I'll be right here at the head of the bed for most of the time,.if you have questions or need something again my name is RN just say my name or try to look up at me and I'll help as best I can",,.then if I silently ask God to please help keep you calm and comfortable, help me to do my very best for you,.etc that's okay?

This is a great discussion btw,..in my heart of hearts, yes a christian heart, I can't imagine anyone being truley offended by me drawing from every resource I believe available to me to give the very best care and have the very best outcome for my pts. I can understand some may believe my "spirituality" resource may be a waste of time,..but surely not offensive!

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Specializes in Brain injury,vent,peds ,geriatrics,home.
elrondaragorn said:
There was a ghost story thread about posessed people dying and taunting the nurses after begging them not to let them die. It inspired the question: How many of you are religious, and do you ever offer to pray for or with a patient whose frightened of dying?

Ive never really offered to pray for or with Pts .However every day before my shift I say a prayer to ease my PTs suffering.And makesure I do the best I can as a nurse.I dont consider myself religious.Was raised Catholic.But I am very spiritual.We all need to believe there is hope for some of the horrible things we see in life .

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Specializes in Psychiatric.

I've never been asked by a patient to pray with/for them, so it hasn't become an issue yet...however, I am a Pagan (a solitary Witch), and not a Christian, so I'm not sure how I'd work that out just yet...

As for people praying for ME, I don't care what you do as long as you help save my butt! lol Honestly, 10 years ago I'd have been 'extremely offended and pissed off' that anyone would consider praying to their gods for me when I don't believe in their gods...but over the years I've come to believe that the fact that someone thought enough about me to ask for a little help from their chosen deity is cool with me.

Just make sure you put some oxygen on me first.;)

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Objectively speaking, it is the epitome of arrogance to believe that you can know enough about reality to know something "doesn't exist" In order to do that, you'd have to know everything-you'd need to be omniscient. Our minds are limited and finite, and if someone smarter than us comes along we can be decieved by them, just as assuredly as the city of Troy was decieved by the Trojan Horse.

All that is important to know, however, is that if your patient finds out that you did something to him that he considers dangerous, he will take an emotional nose dive affecting his treatment and possible accuse you of violating ethics of informed consent, and should their beliefs turn out to be true even though you dismissed them, you really will have done them grave harm.

Unfortunately, not every Christian believes in the traditional beliefs about fallen angels trying to decieve mankind.

You can laugh at such a belief, but I wonder what would have happened if the Russians durring the cold war had managed to convince us they weren't a threat? As it was, we came very close to nuclear war several times durring the cold war: Once in 1960, once in 1962 (Cuban Missile crisis), and in the 80's...one mistep from Regan might have triggered it at any moment. If the Russians convinced us they were friendly foreigners that just wanted to live and work here and share all the cool technology both countries posessed, they could have learned enough about us to undermine our defenses and destroy us without firing a shot.

Fallen angels are much smarter than the Russians, and have been at the deception business a lot longer, and their tactic of allaying fears that they are a threat seem to be working. They have convinced a large majority of people that they are friendly higher powers who only want to help us, and they are destroying people, like the possessed man refered to in the ghost story thread who was floating above his bed durring a code. (Assuming the story is true, of course, but I've heard other stories like it that are true)

For the sake of argument, let's say it is true....

If only someone had prayed with him when he said he was so frightened of dying that -and that "they" would take him. If only they hadn't assumed he was losing his mind and given up on him 20 minutes into a code when he begged them not to let him die. That wasn't exactly a do not resusscitate order, was it? It was more like a ressuscitate at all costs order, or if you will, maybe someone should have called a priest so he could make his peace with God? Then the demons would have left him alone and the medical staff, seeing the man was cured of his "hallucinations" would have seen scientifically verifiable epirical evidence that somethinbg else was going on besides insanity when the man appeared to recover without psychiatric intervention.

A priest told me that too many doctors and nurses assume people approaching death are losing their mind. Yes, some of them may be having hallucinations, but assuming that all of them are is arrogant. I find a disconcerting level of presumption in the medical profession these days. People say this person will never wake up again, and they do. People say you'll never survive this pregnancy and they survive without a single problem and that severely disabled baby they were carrying comes out glowing with health. etc.... etc.... etc.... etc... ∞∞∞∞......These things happen too many times, but I digress...

apologies for the sermon,

My point, simply put, is that you cannot jeopardize a patient by making presumptions about the future or about reality that you can't verify scientifically because people who think they can verify it have often been wrong. Such a presumption could be fatal in more ways than one to your patient who is hoping you will try to save them by whatever means necessary and at all costs. Which means that if I'm a nurse, and someone who never believed in God before suddenly gives me a ressuscitate at all costs order because they are afraid of where they might end up if they die, then I will call whatever religius person they need to counsel them, and if none, I'll pray for them myself and let the patient's wishes to be saved at all costs known to the doctor so he doesn't give up on the guy after 20 minutes. Yes I understand the physiology of permanent brain damage, but as I said before, trying to predict the future is a dangerous game, particularly for the patient because in *****some***** cases a person's brain has been known to put up with a lot more of a pounding than the textbooks say it will.

Ophelia78 said:
You have mentioned people being influenced by demons more than once- I am curious as to whether you believe this is true. I knew a gal in nursing school who felt our psychiatric patients were more susceptible to being "influenced by demons" and was therefore afraid to interact with them.

As for myself, I do enjoy a nice rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on occasion, but prefer to keep my fantasy and reality firmly separate.

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Specializes in Emergency.

I believe in demons. And angels. Heaven and hell. And the devil. But most of all, The Holy Trinity - God, the Father; Jesus, the Son; the Holy Spirit.

I also think that I'm pretty firmly rooted in reality.

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Glad to hear it

jojotoo said:
I believe in demons. And angels. Heaven and hell. And the devil. But most of all, The Holy Trinity - God, the Father; Jesus, the Son; the Holy Spirit.

I also think that I'm pretty firmly rooted in reality.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Geriatrics.
elrondaragorn said:
My point is that if you ask people who have had to deal with people in crisis situations e.g. military, hospitals, accident scenes, any honest professional in those situations will tell you that there is an amazing tendency to become religious as one is threatened with death.

I have not observed that in almost 20 years in the biz. Honestly.

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I didn't say the rate was 100% of all cases, and the experts in this area are usually clergy and families

SharonH, RN said:
I have not observed that in almost 20 years in the biz. Honestly.
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Specializes in Lie detection.
SharonH, RN said:
I have not observed that in almost 20 years in the biz. Honestly.

I haven't either. Oh sure a few pt's ask for clergy but not all, probably not even half. I don't even hear them suddenly speak about religion or God just because they know death is near.

elrondaragorn said:
I didn't say the rate was 100% of all cases, and the experts in this area are usually clergy and families

So nurses that deal with death just about every day they work are not experts? We DO work in hospitals, the military and accident scenes!

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I think people are entitled to whatever beliefs work best for them. If you believe in fallen angels, tooth fairies, God, or not, that's your beeswax.

If your patient is asking you to pray or engage in a religoius ritual that is compatible with your beliefs here is nothing wrong with that. By all means, go for it.

The bottom line is knowing when to STHU too. The hospital setting when the patient is NOT asking for your opinions, help, conversion or weird behavior because you see a demon behind every IV pole... Those would top the list of being a great opportunity to SHUT UP, and you shouldn't miss it.

Believe it or not, there's still some nurses and even managers I work with that can't grasp this.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, a sick patient is NOT the place to evangelize and to do so is arguably abusive.

And I say these things as a person of faith, incidentally. But I'm a professional RN first.

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Family and clergy are with a patient at times nurses can't be, aqnd they have seen things you evidently haven't seen. What you are doing is treating what I said as if it applies in all cases when it doesn't. A lot of times it happens only at the very last moments of life and only because a clergyman or family member is there praying for them. Forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but a nurse doesn't sit by a patient's bedside, tell them how much they are loved by the nurse and others around them, and especially God, or do they?

Cattitude said:

So nurses that deal with death just about every day they work are not experts? We DO work in hospitals, the military and accident scenes!

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