Prayer in Nursing: The Spirituality of Compassionate Caregiving
Historically, prayer has been a natural dimension of nursing. However, for most nurses, it raises a host of questions: What is prayer? Why should nurses pray? How can I as a nurse pray? Will prayer affect my relationship with patients? Are prayer and healing related? Sr. Mary Elizabeth O'Brien responds to these questions and many more in her remarkably sensitive yet practical book, Prayer in Nursing. In the opening chapter, she states that “the ultimate goal is to explore the practice of prayerful, compassionate caregiving in the world of 21st-century nursing” (p. 3).
From the opening chapter on prayer as a part of our spiritual heritage to be reclaimed in nursing, O'Brien moves to describing nursing as a holy calling, prayer as a natural aspect of that calling and the nurse as one who can know and communicate God's thoughts. The following chapters speak more to the sacredness of the nurse-patient relationship that allows nurses to show compassion and relate to suffering. The book ends with two chapters specifically about the nurse as a healer (the relationship of prayer and healing) and the nurse as one who needs to seek restoration (through personal prayer, contemplation, journaling and spiritual reading).
Throughout the book the author artfully weaves together historical documents from both nursing and religious writings, clinical situations, Scripture and theology. Thanks to the personal tone of the book, the reader experiences the compassion integral to the nurse as caregiver. The transparency and vulnerability of the writing enable the reader to enter the experiences of the book.
Two dimensions of Prayer in Nursing set it apart from other texts on caregiving. First, O'Brien draws on many years of nursing to illustrate every point with a poignant patient story. Second, the book is as much a devotional volume as a teaching text. Each chapter begins with a meditation and ends with a prayer. Chapter seven, an outstanding chapter, illustrates the nurse as a minister of caring through associating each station of the cross with a patient story and the nurse's prayer.
Prayer in Nursing unapologetically emerges from a Christian worldview and upholds the historical spiritual heritage of nursing. It is a gem for nurses in all settings, from acute care to parish nursing. I plan to keep the book nearby for frequent inspiration, for it merges the two most important aspects of my life as a Christian nurse: my faith and my profession.
—Reviewed by Sandra L. Jamison, RN, DNS
(Adapted from a book review in the Journal of Christian Nursing, Spring 2003)
