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Leicester, 25 May 2009: An NRI nurse was
suspended from his job after he suggested his patients
to seek God during a training session at his hospital in
Leicester, England.
Anand Rao, a nurse with over 40 years experience, was
suspended by the Leicester NHS Trust after he advised
two women who played the roles of patients to turn to
God.
According to UK's Telegraph newspaper, Rao, a committed
Christian, advised the “patient” to go to church to have
her stress eased as she was roleplaying being diagnosed
with serious heart condition which she said created
stress.
To another woman "patient" who had AIDS, Rao suggested,
"In such circumstances when no treatment is available,
the best treatment is prayer to God.”
The 71 year old Christian is furious that the comments
made in a training session created the uproar that
eventually led to his termination.
He rather feels his tutor should have corrected him on
the right practices in palliative care.
Rao, meanwhile, has decided to take legal action with
the help of Christian Legal Centre (CLC), an
organisation providing legal support for Christians in
the United Kingdom and lobby on their behalf.
"How is it possible that a nurse who has served the
public for 40 years should find himself dismissed
because in a training exercise he advised someone to go
to church? To seek to censor and suppress this kind of
language and belief is the fruits of a closed society,"
CLC director Andrea Minichiello Williams was quoted by
the Daily Express as saying.
According to a recent survey, nearly two thirds of the
Church of England's General Synod believe Christians
face discrimination at work.
Of the 80 out of 484 Synod members surveyed, 63 per cent
said they felt Christians were being discriminated in
the workplace, while 59 per cent said they believed
freedom of belief had declined in the last ten years.
The survey by The Telegraph was released just days after
Nurse Caroline Petrie was suspended from work and later
reinstated when she offered to pray for a patient.
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