Prayer Requests from Patients and Healthcare Practitioners (Nurse Research, Video 2:36)

Nurses and other healthcare practitioners sometimes are asked by patients to pray for or with them. Although spiritual care is believed by many to be a part of the healing process, patients’ prayer requests can still be perceived in different ways. For this reason, exploring the comfort levels of nurses receiving patient-initiated prayer requests was studied.

This study involved 134 nurses in America completing an online survey which was later analysed. Their responses revealed the following patterns of ease and dis-ease in response to patients’ requests for prayer.

1)  The pattern of ease for prayer with patients distinguished three themes: being open to the voice of calm or silence, experiencing physical or spiritual peace, calling the chaplain.

For these nurses, prayers are natural components of nursing care. The majority of responses to all scenarios demonstrated an overwhelming ease in response and capacity to pray with patients on request.

2)  The pattern of dis-ease for prayers with patients distinguished two themes: having cautious hesitancy and praying to whose God.

These nurses experienced dis-ease with patients’ prayer requests, no matter what the situations were.

Healthcare practitioners should be prepared for how they would respond to patients’ requests for prayer.

In the following video presented by the Christian Broadcasting Network, a Christian nurse in the UK was suspended for initiating an offer to pray with a patient.

Frances Shani Parker, Author

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