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Sunday 8 February 2009 |
Sunday Telegraph Letters, February 8 2009
SIR – We read with dismay of the suspension of a community nurse, Caroline Petrie, for offering to pray for a patient (report, February 1). The offer, politely made, did not demonstrate a failure of "personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity", unlike the complaint and the pursuit of it by the North Somerset Primary Care Trust.
Surely the reasonable response should have been a polite letter of acknowledgement of the complaint with the promise of a discussion with the nurse involved. To suspend a committed, caring and conscientious community nurse from her work in an already stretched service represents not only a "failure of commitment to equality and diversity", but also a failure to use NHS resources responsibly and, most importantly, a failure of common sense.
Drs Ruth and Julian Colledge
Hamstreet, Kent
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SIR – I have worked for much of my life as a nurse in an old people's home and I know how important it is to many old people that someone understands their beliefs. When they were younger, Christianity was the vogue and most children attended Sunday school and church as a norm. As most older people reach their final years, life after death becomes much more real. Praying with such patients brings them peace and comfort. It gives them hope.
I have watched the faces of many older people at the Sunday worship time in the residential home. The difference it makes to them both in their minds and their bodies is remarkable.
Fran Kippax
Tuxford, Nottinghamshire
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SIR – If a nurse was suspended simply because she offered to pray for a patient, this suggests that nowadays unbelief can be just as intolerant as (sadly) belief has sometimes been.
Dom Aldhelm Cameron-Brown
Cranham, Gloucester
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SIR – A nurse gets suspended for offering, unpaid and only if they want it, to pray for patients. A peer proposes to take considerable sums of money in order to change the laws of the land in favour of a rich company.
He is neither suspended nor will he lose his job or have to give back the money. Peers are of course prayed for each day whether they like it or not in the Lords, but one somehow doubts that all peers were there to hear it – they were too busy feathering their nests.
It is clearly a much more heinous crime to offer, out of real concern for somebody who is suffering, to say a prayer that may bring them solace and even healing than it is to solicit payment to amend the law, to benefit oneself and rich companies. How New Labour is that?
David Lewis
Purley, Surrey
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