Beware the Nurse's Prayer
All of the nurses I know are religious.
That is what happens when you go to a private religious university for nursing school and then work in a cancer hospital;--if you don't have some sort of hope in a beneficent God, and in life after death, then working with cancer patients can get pretty depressing.
But because of what we see every day at work, we are more likely to focus on relieving suffering than on prolonging life.
Which is how I found myself praying for my patient to die.
This patient, alias Bob, was on the highest oxygen flow possible without having a machine (aka ventilator) breathe for him [For those medically-minded, that means he was on high-flow oxygen 40L 100% FiO2 and ALSO had on 15L NRB mask]. Yet he was still in significant distress; he was using all of his chest and abdominal muscles to pull in more oxygen, and on top of that, he had blood constantly pouring out of his nose and mouth. He looked exhausted, agitated, and downright ghastly. After my morning assessment, I walked out of his room and told my boss that his condition wasn't ethical.
When Bob's doctor came to his room to discuss options, the patient very clearly and emphatically declined intubation [aka a ventilator hooked up to a tube down to his lungs]. Which basically left the option of making him as comfortable as possible. While his wife made calls to family members to come and be with him, we titrated up his pain pump until he was able to rest comfortably. And I prayed.
I prayed that God would help him die quickly. I asked my husband to pray that Bob would die. When Mark and I prayed together, I made sure we included a request for Bob's death.
Within days, he died.
It's really odd to pray--out of the goodness of your heart--for someone to get killed. Not by any means am I saying I endorse euthanasia--but I am saying that I don't mind praying for death. His comfort--not his life--was at the core of that prayer.
This is in contrast to one of my prayers later that month, that someone would show up with an injury at the emergency center where I was doing a clinical rotation.
I need clinical hours for my nurse practitioner program, and it's not necessary that I see a patient every hour--but I needed to see at least one patient each time I go to clinic. Some days are slow, and I get worried if anyone will show up. So the night before clinic, I asked God if He could please send someone to the ER, preferably with an interesting case. If it wasn't too much trouble.
A guy came in with a dog bite.
yay-es
May we all be kept safe from the prayers of nurses.
That is what happens when you go to a private religious university for nursing school and then work in a cancer hospital;--if you don't have some sort of hope in a beneficent God, and in life after death, then working with cancer patients can get pretty depressing.
But because of what we see every day at work, we are more likely to focus on relieving suffering than on prolonging life.
Which is how I found myself praying for my patient to die.
This patient, alias Bob, was on the highest oxygen flow possible without having a machine (aka ventilator) breathe for him [For those medically-minded, that means he was on high-flow oxygen 40L 100% FiO2 and ALSO had on 15L NRB mask]. Yet he was still in significant distress; he was using all of his chest and abdominal muscles to pull in more oxygen, and on top of that, he had blood constantly pouring out of his nose and mouth. He looked exhausted, agitated, and downright ghastly. After my morning assessment, I walked out of his room and told my boss that his condition wasn't ethical.
When Bob's doctor came to his room to discuss options, the patient very clearly and emphatically declined intubation [aka a ventilator hooked up to a tube down to his lungs]. Which basically left the option of making him as comfortable as possible. While his wife made calls to family members to come and be with him, we titrated up his pain pump until he was able to rest comfortably. And I prayed.
I prayed that God would help him die quickly. I asked my husband to pray that Bob would die. When Mark and I prayed together, I made sure we included a request for Bob's death.
Within days, he died.
It's really odd to pray--out of the goodness of your heart--for someone to get killed. Not by any means am I saying I endorse euthanasia--but I am saying that I don't mind praying for death. His comfort--not his life--was at the core of that prayer.
This is in contrast to one of my prayers later that month, that someone would show up with an injury at the emergency center where I was doing a clinical rotation.
I need clinical hours for my nurse practitioner program, and it's not necessary that I see a patient every hour--but I needed to see at least one patient each time I go to clinic. Some days are slow, and I get worried if anyone will show up. So the night before clinic, I asked God if He could please send someone to the ER, preferably with an interesting case. If it wasn't too much trouble.
A guy came in with a dog bite.
yay-es
May we all be kept safe from the prayers of nurses.
make sure you don't pray for your father.......I'll ask your other siblings to pray for me. dad
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