NURSE WITH 40-YEARS EXPERIENCE SACKED FOR SUGGESTING A PATIENT ‘GO TO CHURCH’ TO RELIEVE STRESS IN A MOCK TRAINING SESSION
A NHS Nurse with over 40-years experience has been sacked after he suggested two "patients" might go to Church and pray to relieve stress during a role play session on a training course.
Anand Rao was taking part in simulated situations as part of an exercise in palliative care. He had elected to go on the training session and found his own grant funding to do so. The Christian, a bank staff nurse in hospitals run by the Leicester NHS Trust, advised two women playing the roles of patients to consider asking God to help them. He has instructed the Christian Legal Centre to advise him and is considering taking legal action for religious discrimination against his former employer. The CLC has instructed Paul Diamond, the leading religious rights barrister.
Mr Rao says that he, and thousands of his former patients, will be staggered that someone who has given four decades to caring for people can be treated in the way he has. He says the action by his employers is “heavy handed and disproportionate”.
In one role play Mr Rao was involved in he was asked to advise a woman with a serious heart condition. The committed Christian, who was born in India, said: "Mrs Jones [a made-up name] told me that her doctor told her that she will not live long and this created stress.
"I asked Mrs Jones whether she goes to church, she said ‘no’. I advised her if she went to church the stress might be eased. I further told her I go to church for the same reason."
In another role play scenario, Mr Rao said he advised a woman "patient" who had Aids. In the exercise they were looking to elicit how a nurse would deal with advising a patient about their sexual relationships. Mr Rao said: "In such circumstances when no treatment is available, the best treatment is prayer to God." It is understood the woman "patient" in the role play situation had, however, wanted to find out ways of continuing to have safe sex and felt she did not receive sympathetic, suitable advice.
Mr Rao, 71, believes his tutor on the course should have raised the issue of a worker’s religious beliefs with a patient and the way he had handled the simulation exercises. However, instead, the training course resulted in a report from the course organiser, Leicestershire and Rutland Organisation for the Relief of Suffering (LOROS), to his employer raising concerns over his performance.
Mr Rao, who worked for the Leicester NHS Trust since May 2005, was initially suspended by his employer on the grounds that "concerns have been raised about your professional conduct by the course directors at LOROS." The care worker did not attend a disciplinary hearing in the New Year when the allegations against him were being examined as he was not given, as he had requested, a copy of the questions and answers from his training meeting. Mr Rao, who earned just £11 an hour after a life-time in care work had his contract terminated in a letter from his employers which addressed concerns about his behavior at the training course.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, Barrister and Director of CLC commented: “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”.
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