"Why Did I Become A Nurse? To help and heal and love others. Nursing is loving," says Pam Martin, whose twenty-eight-year career as a hospital RN included emergency room, critical care, and supervisory duties. Her motivation isn't surprising, since it's shared by many others who enter the field. But what surprised Pam is that pursuing her goal led her on a journey that has transformed her view of nursing. It brought her to embrace a totally spiritual approach to healing—one in which God is the only healing power and in which nursing care supports that premise.
Some aspects of her journey aren't so unusual. Increasingly, medical professionals are examining the connection between thought and health. Some are exploring ways to take into account the importance of the patient's thought in medical practice and to add elements of spiritual care to medical regimens—perhaps by talking with patients about their religious beliefs or offering to pray with them. Recent issues of a Christian nursing magazine, for example, included articles about nursing's moral standard, and nursing care supportive of different religious beliefs.
People of faith in the therapeutic fields aren't a rarity. But what happens when a doctor or nurse prays and repeatedly sees healing occur that s/he feels is medically inexplicable? I talked with three medical professionals who faced this issue. What they were seeing impelled them even further in their already-active search to understand God's power and its connection to their patients' needs. For each of them, this search has become a life-transforming quest.
