April 10-14 is National Cancer Registrars Week. Are you taking care of or know any patients who are battling the big C?
Despite the advanced technology and modern treatment plans, we, as nurses, should still value the proven benefits of prayers in healing our patients. We should take care of their faith and spiritual health as much as we care for their physical and mental needs.
Here are some of the most powerful healing prayers for cancer you can share.
A Healing Petition
May God heal me, body and soul. May my pain cease, may my strength increase, may my fears be released, May blessings, love, and joy surround me. Amen.
Prayer for Easing Pain
Father, with you nothing is impossible. You are God of all flesh; we love you and we are confident that no situation is too hard for you. We come to you on behalf of this dear one seeking healing from cancer. God, Jesus Christ has fully paid the price by the stripes He took; we therefore are asking that the devourer gets off from this child of yours in Jesus Mighty Name, Amen.
Prayer for Healing
Father God, we humbly pray for all those who are fighting cancer. Give them the hope and courage they need each day. Comfort them in their pain and bless them with healing. Strengthen their family, friends, and caregivers. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Prayer for Cancer Fighters
Heavenly Father, Give all cancer fighters comfort when they are in pain. Lay your healing hand on all and remove every cancer cell so that they may be healed! Amen
Prayer for Physicians and Nurses
Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon your blessed name and we pray for your merciful heart to surround these with love, strength, and courage and we ask Your hands to touch them with the power of healing. May they be directed to the right treatment in Your blessed name as we ask You Lord to represent the physicians, nurses, and medical care aids and administer them in Your spirits. May every cancerous cell be cast out and replaced with good ones. May every spot of this deadly cell be wiped out by Your powerful hands.
Prayer through St. Jude
God of healing mercy, in Jesus your Son you stretch out your hand in compassion, restoring the sinner, healing the sick, and lifting up those bowed down. Embrace us now in your loving care, particularly those afflicted with cancer, for whom this intention is offered. May the Spirit of Jesus bring us all health in soul and body, that with joy and thanksgiving we may praise you for your goodness, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
See Also: 20 Short But Effective Prayers for Surgery
Prayer through Saint Peregrine
O great St. Peregrine, you have been called “The Mighty,” “The Wonder-Worker,” because of the numerous miracles which you have obtained from God for those who have had recourse to you.
For so many years you bore in your own flesh this cancerous disease that destroys the very fibre of our being, and who had recourse to the source of all grace when the power of man could do no more. You were favoured with the vision of Jesus coming down from His Cross to heal your affliction. Ask of God and Our Lady, the cure of the sick whom we entrust to you.
(Pause here and silently recall the names of the sick for whom you are praying)
Aided in this way by your powerful intercession, we shall sing to God, now and for all eternity, a song of gratitude for His great goodness and mercy.
Amen.
Prayer through Saint Agatha
Oh St. Agatha, who withstood the unwelcome advances from unwanted suitors, and suffered pain and torture for her devotion to Our Lord, we celebrate your faith, dignity, and martyrdom. Protect us against rape and other violations, guard us against breast cancer and other afflictions of women, and inspire us to overcome adversity. Oh St. Agatha, virgin and martyr, mercifully grant that we who venerate your sacrifice, may receive your intercession. Amen.
Prayer for Strength
Lord, at the moment nothing seems to be able to help the loss I feel.
My heart is broken and my spirit mourns. All I know is that Your grace is sufficient. This day, this hour Moment by moment I choose to lean on You, For when I am at my weakest Your strength is strongest. I pour out my grief to You And praise You that on one glorious day When all suffering is extinguished and love has conquered We shall walk together again.
A Simple Prayer for Healing
Lord of Heaven,
I rest underneath your mighty wings of love.I dwell within your gentle heart.I know there is healing in your touch.Through the sufferings of Christ I can ask for restoration And trust in your goodness.You are my Lord, my Saviour, My healer and my friend.I dwell within your gentle embrace.Amen.
See Also: 35 Nurse’s Prayers That Will Inspire Your Soul
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Howard University Hospital is pleased to offer HUHealthcare Connect; an online patient portal designed to enable our patients to play a more meaningful and powerful role in their healthcare future. You can logon to HUHealthcare Connect from any location or device that enables an internet connection.
Table of contents
Information Available via HUHealthcare Connect
With HUHealthcare Connect, you will be able to see your lab results, radiology reports, and a document summarizing the care you received during your last encounter with the hospital. In addition, you will be able to access health and medical information from MedLine Plus, an internationally recognized library service of the National Institutes of Health. In the near future, you will also be able to electronically request prescription refills, securely message your providers, request changes to your address and phone numbers, and access additional medical information.
How to Set Up a Patient Portal Account
From your laptop or desktop computer, log into www.huhealthcareconnect.com. If you have an existing account, log in using your username and password. If you do not have an existing account, log in using the username and password as defined below.
Username: Your first name first initial + your last name + your birth year
Example: For John Rocket born on 03/04/1982
Username would be: jrocket1982
Password: Your first 4 letters of your last name + your date of birth + @
Example: For John Rocket born on 03/04/1982
Password would be: [email protected]
For More Information
On line help is available via the Contact Us menu in the Patient Portal. In addition, you may contact us directly at [email protected] or 202-768-1210, Monday through Friday, from 8:00 am to 4:30.pm. We will respond to you by the end of the next business day.
huhealthcare.com
A Christian nurse fired after patients complained she talked more about God than about their operations is appealing against her dismissal.
Sarah Kuteh lost her job at Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford, Kent, after eight ‘extremely vulnerable’ patients facing surgery submitted complaints against her behaviour.
The nurse told one cancer patient facing surgery he had a better chance of survival if he prayed to God.
But the mother-of-three said she her dismissal and referral to the Nursing and Midwifery Council for disqualification proceedings after several months’ suspension and referred last August after 15 years as a nurse was ‘a hugely disproportionate punishment’.
She said: ‘I would… reassure them, based on the joy and peace that I really have found in Jesus.’
She described her experience as ’embarrassing and very painful’ as she was escorted out of the hospital with her possessions.
‘All I had done was to nurse and care for patients. How could it ever be harmful to tell someone about Jesus?’
Backed by the Christian Legal Centre, her lawyer told the tribunal she had just been acting out of compassion.
Pavel Stroilov said: ‘A nurse without compassion would be unworthy of the name. On top of performing her immediate duties, a good nurse would try and find kind words to say to her patient.’
But the chair of the hospital trust’s appeal hearing, Victoria Leivers-Carruth, said Kuteh was dismissed because she used one-on-one time with patients to ‘impose her religious belief’.
She said: ‘We did not believe that Mrs Kuteh was being disciplined because she was a Christian.
‘It was apparent to us that Mrs Kuteh was disciplined because she had engaged in conversations about religion that were unwanted by patients and contrary to her line manager’s instructions.’
Sarah Collins, general manager for medicine at Darent Valley Hospital, said despite repeated warnings she had ‘persisted with questioning patients on religious grounds’.
Kuteh’s ‘spirituality blurred the professional boundary’ between her and patients, she said.
‘Following reasonable management requests formed a pivotal aspect of Mrs Kuteh’s contract of employment with the Trust,’ she added.
believersportal.com
Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.
And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.
Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation.
The question has been a contentious one among researchers. Proponents have argued that prayer is perhaps the most deeply human response to disease, and that it may relieve suffering by some mechanism that is not yet understood. Skeptics have contended that studying prayer is a waste of money and that it presupposes supernatural intervention, putting it by definition beyond the reach of science.
At least 10 studies of the effects of prayer have been carried out in the last six years, with mixed results. The new study was intended to overcome flaws in the earlier investigations. The report was scheduled to appear in The American Heart Journal next week, but the journal’s publisher released it online yesterday.
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In a hurriedly convened news conference, the study’s authors, led by Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston, said that the findings were not the last word on the effects of so-called intercessory prayer. But the results, they said, raised questions about how and whether patients should be told that prayers were being offered for them.
“One conclusion from this is that the role of awareness of prayer should be studied further,” said Dr. Charles Bethea, a cardiologist at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and a co-author of the study.
Other experts said the study underscored the question of whether prayer was an appropriate subject for scientific study.
“The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion,” said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, “Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine.”
The study cost $2.4 million, and most of the money came from the John Templeton Foundation, which supports research into spirituality. The government has spent more than $2.3 million on prayer research since 2000.
Dean Marek, a chaplain at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a co-author of the report, said the study said nothing about the power of personal prayer or about prayers for family members and friends.
Working in a large medical center like Mayo, Mr. Marek said, “You hear tons of stories about the power of prayer, and I don’t doubt them.”
In the study, the researchers monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals who received coronary bypass surgery, in which doctors reroute circulation around a clogged vein or artery.
The patients were broken into three groups. Two were prayed for; the third was not. Half the patients who received the prayers were told that they were being prayed for; half were told that they might or might not receive prayers.
The researchers asked the members of three congregations — St. Paul’s Monastery in St. Paul; the Community of Teresian Carmelites in Worcester, Mass.; and Silent Unity, a Missouri prayer ministry near Kansas City — to deliver the prayers, using the patients’ first names and the first initials of their last names.
The congregations were told that they could pray in their own ways, but they were instructed to include the phrase, “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.”
Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.
In another of the study’s findings, a significantly higher number of the patients who knew that they were being prayed for — 59 percent — suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were uncertain. The authors left open the possibility that this was a chance finding. But they said that being aware of the strangers’ prayers also may have caused some of the patients a kind of performance anxiety.
“It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?” Dr. Bethea said.
The study also found that more patients in the uninformed prayer group — 18 percent — suffered major complications, like heart attack or stroke, compared with 13 percent in the group that did not receive prayers. In their report, the researchers suggested that this finding might also be a result of chance.
One reason the study was so widely anticipated was that it was led by Dr. Benson, who in his work has emphasized the soothing power of personal prayer and meditation.
At least one earlier study found lower complication rates in patients who received intercessory prayers; others found no difference. A 1997 study at the University of New Mexico, involving 40 alcoholics in rehabilitation, found that the men and women who knew they were being prayed for actually fared worse.
The new study was rigorously designed to avoid problems like the ones that came up in the earlier studies. But experts said the study could not overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to prayer study: the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends, families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the sick and dying.
Bob Barth, the spiritual director of Silent Unity, the Missouri prayer ministry, said the findings would not affect the ministry’s mission.
“A person of faith would say that this study is interesting,” Mr. Barth said, “but we’ve been praying a long time and we’ve seen prayer work, we know it works, and the research on prayer and spirituality is just getting started.”
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