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Evangelism in Hospitals


HopeToBeGreen

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I witnessed the following in hospital recently:

 

An elderly male patient was alone following hip replacement surgery. He was visited by 2 women who he apparently knew. The visit began unremarkably but it quickly became clear that the women were evangelical Christians and they had come to convince the man to accept Jesus as his personal savior so that he could be "saved". The patient was very polite but didn't seem particularly interested in their offer. He felt he already had a relationship with Jesus.

 

The women continued to hound the man for 20 or 30 minutes quoting scripture, explaining that Jesus just wanted to be welcomed into his heart and telling him that Jesus could not only heal his soul but could heal his body as well. Finally, the patient gave in and agreed to be "saved", perhaps just to get them to go away. They got him to recite some prayer or declaration then they went on for another 20 minutes or so continuing to explain the importance of what he'd done. They were quite noisy about this.

 

Watching this I was struck by how vulnerable the patient was in this situation. It seemed really unfair for the women to push the man so hard for so long when he was ill and unable to get out of bed.

 

So I'm wondering, as a health care provider how would you handle this situation? Would you intervene discretely to protect the patient. Perhaps it could be time for his bath or some care activity. Would you consider that too paternal? What do you think about the women's behavior?

 

Any and all thoughts are welcome.

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And you didn't do anything?

 

At the time I was visiting another patient in the room and so I really didn't think it was my place to get in the middle of it.

 

I did point it out to the nurse who, said she'd never seen anything like it before and seemed to think it was quite questionable however I think she unsure how to deal with it.

 

I thought it was an interesting ethical problem. On the one hand, the patient has the right to autonomy and that clearly includes the right to chose who he accepts or rejects as guests. The nurse has a duty to protect the patient from harm. However in this case there is no real harm -- I'm discounting the possible 'spiritual damage'. The guests are just annoying the patient. However it does seem like there should be some diplomatic way to diffuse the situation and save the patient both the annoyance of being saved and the embarrassment of turning his friends away.

 

I really like Mithril's suggestion. I shouldn't be too hard to find an excuse to get the two ladies out of the room for a moment to talk to the patient privately about his wishes. If he's content you just let the ladies back, if not you can just come up with some diplomatic excuse for why they can't stay. Great idea!

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I agree the patient has a right to autonomy and to chose his own guests.

But the question is, is the patient being autonomous? Did he choose to have them remain as his guests? Or were these women imposing themselves when they knew that the patient would be unable to push them away.

 

As the nurse, I would've asked them to give me a moment with the patient, and asked him if he knew and wanted to continue seeing these visitors before I tell them to either leave or come back.

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wow, that's a really difficult situation, i feel like you almost have to be there to feel it out since situations like that sort of transcend words, i personally would have interrupted politely by saying we needed to do some tests/bath etc., talked to him personally and asked him his thoughts about them seeing them in the future while explaining i noticed he looked uncomfortable etc. and then base future decisions based upon his wishes

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Eh... if I was in that room, I would have kicked them out so fast their heads would spin. But then again, it all depends on your level of authority. As a medical student you have much more authority than say a person who is simply volunteering at the hospital and is doing friendly visits.

 

I must admit I have a strong hate towards people that try to convert others to a certain religion. It especially gets to me when these "zealots" target vulnerable people such as the elderly gentleman you mentioned in your post. To be honest, I don't even know if those people had the right to be there in the first place... If a person feels the need for spiritual assistance/guidance he is free to call the hospital's chaplaincy services, not the other way around lol.

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