THE most hysteria generated by any single news item this week bubbled out of the lamentable tale of Daily Mail martyr, community nurse Caroline Petrie, who got herself into a well-deserved pickle for offering to pray for patients, thereby contravening NHS guidelines.
Nurse Caroline Petrie
The Mail milked the story for all it was worth, screaming the odds about political correctness gone mad, and mouthing off tosh about the “religious persecution” of Christians.
Most irritating of all, the Daily Mail conveniently ignored the fact that full provision is made for patients wanting “spiritual guidance” – courtesy of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money spent annually by the NHS on hospital chaplains.
Last month, at a meeting of the Brighton & Hove Humanist Society, Dr Robert Stovold, in an address entitled Spiritual Care on the NHS – Chaplains or Charlatans? – revealed a troubling statistic:
According to the website of the Diocese of London, there are 400 full time hospital chaplains in the UK. And according to the Worcester Acute Health Care Trust, each chaplain costs £50,000 to maintain. If those figures are accurate, chaplains cost the NHS some £20 million a year! The number of deaths involving the bacterium Clostridium difficile in England and Wales rose by 28 percent between 2006 and 2007. Rationalists are also realists, and realise that the hard-pressed NHS will never be perfect. But they also know that the millions of pounds spent by the NHS on chaplains every year could and should be better spent.
Given that the NHS also employs hospital chaplains of other faiths, the total bill will be a great deal higher than £20-million each year.
Dr Stovold added:
I recognise that religious beliefs are very important to a minority of people, and I have nothing against religious representatives coming into the hospital and ministering to such people – provided, that is, that they do not proselytise to anyone else. What I am against, though, is the use of state money to subsidise any such ministry. Atheists are constantly being told by religious people that a religious person’s faith inspires them to do good works. Why, then, do they expect the State to pay them for ministering to sick members of their own flock? Is it right to demand (for example) that Muslim and atheist taxpayers foot the bill for a chaplaincy that will doubtless contain a disproportionately high number of Christians?
He also pointed out that:
A recent large-scale scientific study into the effects of intercessory prayer in patients of heart bypass surgery found that ‘Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications’. In other words, prayer was not associated with a difference when patients didn’t know they were being prayed for, and may have actually hampered a person’s recovery if they did!
Perhaps the fact that people knew they were being prayed for caused them to dwell on the gravity of their condition, and made things worse rather than better. Has it occurred to the Trust that, religious or not, sick patients in a hospital ward may regard chaplains in much the same way as a sick animal regards vultures – as unwelcome harbingers of death?
Dr Stovold favours a secular solution to the question of chaplains:
Don’t give us any money for humanist chaplains, and don’t give the religious people any money for religious chaplains either.
In the packed audience who attended Dr Stovold’s address was a young woman who declared herself a nurse, and a practicing Christian. She said she would never contemplate offering to pray with a patient because she recognised that this would put her in breach of NHS guidelines.
Nurse Petrie must have been aware of these guidelines too, but chose to ignore them. So it should not have come as a surprise that she was suspended for flagrantly flouting the rules.
She has now been offered her job back – a development welcomed by the National Secular Society. Terry Sanderson, president of the NSS, said:
Community nurses are a great resource, particularly for the elderly who might otherwise find visiting a doctor difficult, and we value them. We didn’t want to see Mrs Petrie sacked, but we did want her to abide by the code of practice that all her colleagues abide by. That code of practice is still in place, so in effect, nothing has changed. Mrs Petrie still has the opportunity of doing her job, but she must do it on her employer’s terms.
But Petrie is cautious about the offer from the North Somerset Health Trust. She told the Daily Mail:
I’m not too sure I would go back to work until I know what the implications of that would be. I would want to know what the terms were before I made a decision. On the issue of praying for my patients I’d want to continue and if they won’t allow me that I don’t think I would return. It’s very difficult for me not to ask patients if they want me to pray for them when I feel that prayer works for the sick. It’s a matter of conscience to me. I should not have to choose between being a Christian and being a nurse.
Sanderson concluded:
This whole case has been misrepresented by the right-wing press. Nobody is persecuting Mrs Petrie for her religion, they are just asking her to abide by the rules that have been set in place to protect vulnerable people from exploitation. Mrs Petrie may not be an aggressive evangelist – although her belligerent insistence that the rules do not apply to her because she is a Christian – does her no credit. But other religiously-motivated health workers might be less restrained. The rules are there to curb any such people going into the homes of their patients and foisting unwanted religious rituals on to them. We wholeheartedly support those protections.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
February 7th, 2009 at 12:57 am
The first thing I would think, as I lay in my hospital bed, and that nurse loomed over me, asking “shall I pray for you?” is;
“shit – all this medical treatment hasn’t worked – and now I’m gonna die!”
The increased worry would certainly not be welcome.
The woman is some kind of dangerous idiot – how can she possibly believe in talking snakes and noahs ark, and have a job that involves medicinal science knowledge too.
While I’m at it – where do I sign to support legislation to stop the rug-butters and zombie-eaters pissing away £20millon that could go on say, stem cell research?
February 7th, 2009 at 10:13 am
The Health Authority concerned in this matter received lots of nasty emails and telephone calls in the usual coordinated campaign by the Christian nutters and the BNP – yes that is correct, the BNP published email addresses and telephone numbers of the Heathcare Trust inviting ‘persecuted’ Christians to vent their anger. The Daily Mail and Western Daily Press were furious about Ms Petrie’s suspension and did their usual incitement. If this evangelical nurse does the same again then she should be sacked and banned from nursing. I sent an email of support to the NHS Trust applauding their decision to suspend this nurse; I hope other rational people did as well, as we too must be heard.
February 7th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Well done, especially to the NSS for nailing this typical pack of lies. Of course we don’t want NHS staff foisting their religion on us. Prayer – as Shargraves points out – is for the dying and the dead. It’s unhealthy in every sense to have it going on in hospitals.
Let’s start another atheist campaign to abolish NHS chaplains.
February 7th, 2009 at 11:26 am
That’s certainly a refreshing read, but it’ll do no good. It’ll receive nowhere near the amount of attention that Petrie’s case did in the first place, so the overall effect will be the public seeing a woman being fired for her religious beliefs then being rightfully rehired after a moral campaign.
Which is highly annoying. There needs to be some way of getting these kinds of responses into the mainstream, whether it’s profitable or not.
On another note, this nurse looks disturbingly like Catherine Tate in that photo. I hate Catherine Tate.
February 7th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
“Nurse, the pain is getting much worse!”
“Well bless my soul. Would you like me to sacrifice a goat?”
February 8th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Stupid cow. Her bosses told her to shut up and she didn’t. It’s a simple disciplinary matter.
I’ve said this before. I wouldn’t employ someone I thought was religious.
If she preached at me I could walk away. If you’re bedbound it’s not so easy. I’m sure a religious patient (or their carer) would have mentioned their spiritual needs to Mother Theresa.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Immediately after I had my operation for tongue cancer, the hospital chaplain poked his head around the door, hoping to save a soul. He probably thought I was in the medical equivalent of a foxhole. As I couldn’t speak at the time, I just wrote “atheist” on my writing pad, & I was mightily pleased to see him piss off with a confused look on his face. It certainly aided my recovery, but not in the way he thought… If enough people do this sort of thing maybe we will wear them down…
February 8th, 2009 at 10:21 am
“A recent large-scale scientific study into the effects of intercessory prayer,”
Anyone got a link to the study itself? Not that I doubt Doc Stovold’s sources, but I have friends on other chatrooms who do!
Also, Alun, you may not legally make an employment decision based on someones faith… At least not directly. If you can justify it by saying “Their faith was causing them to behave in such and such a way, which was detrimental”, then there shouldn’t be any problems.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Ed, here is the link you requested:
http://www.ahjonline.com/artic.....6/abstract
February 8th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Have to say, an alarm bell went off in my head when I saw this story and that it appeared in the Daily Mail.
As I recall, there’s a Christian PR agent who’s done a lot of work for folk like the LCF who seems to be making a steady living selling these stories to the Mail, Telegraph and Times, having identified a niche market. Can’t recall his name off-hand, but he has definitely been linked to the extraordinary amount of instant coverage the BA employee, civil registrar and Bristol counsellor got before their cases even reached tribunals.
More interestingly, wonder does he split the cash with anyone else, and would that explain why the ‘victims’ only seem to talk to media who are known to pay handsomely for interviews?
February 8th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
If Ms. Petrie is so convinced that prayer works then why doesn’t she just do it – without asking for the patient’s consent? I am sure that, like most christians, she is frequently asked by her clergy to pray for strangers, in disastrous situations of one sort or another, without their express consent.
Perhaps she is deluded enough to believe that her prayers are such an effective treatment that she needs ‘informed consent’ such as is needed by medical practioners for surgery or drug treatments. More likely I feel is that she gets some sort of personal kick out of the image of piety and saintliness she feels the offer to pray gives her.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
What a foul mouthed bunch so many of you atheists are,is it because you sawdust for brains or because the Christians you hate so much dont actually dislike you but try to love you ,is that what sticks in your throat or is it because they,ve seen you off so many times before and look as if they will again.?