To pray or not to pray:
a question of ethics
Charlotte French, Aru Narayanasamy
Abstract
There is a widespread belief that nurses have a duty to provide
spiritual care. However, many feel there is still a need for debate
surrounding the ethical use of prayer in both nursing research and
practice. By using critical reflections and evidence-based literature,
this paper develops a discourse on the ethics of prayer as a spiritual
intervention in nursing and health care practice. Several key ethical
issues are highlighted. In regards to research, lack of informed consent
is a major concern in both research and nursing practice. Key ethical
issues in practice include questions around intention and authority,
e.g. despite the religious beliefs of the nurse, intentions to proselytize
must be avoided to protect patient autonomy and avoid abuse of
the nurse’s authority. Furthermore, prayer has unknown side effects
and implications. This paper concludes that, in practice, nurses must
reconcile their personal, spiritual beliefs with their professional duties,
and while this may be a delicate balance, it is not yet appropriate to
encourage or dissuade a patient from their beliefs until appropriate
research evidence is produced.
Key words: Intercessory prayer n Ethics n Nursing n Religion
P
rayer is acknowledged in both ancient and modern
times as an intervention for alleviating illness
and promoting good health (Narayanasamy and
Narayanasamy, 2008). Advocates of spirituality in
nursing and health care have suggested that it is nurses’ duty
to provide spiritual/religious care; however, there is ethical
uncertainty whether (and how) to include prayer in clinical
practice (Winslow and Winslow, 2003; Ledger, 2005). This
paper offers a discourse on the ethics of prayer derived from
critical reflections and evidence-based literature. For the
purpose of this paper, intercessory prayer is defined as the act
of praying on behalf of someone else who is in need, i.e. to
request a god or divine being to help the individual.
Prayer as a therapeutic intervention
Religion has permeated health care since primitive times,
where rites and rituals were used to protect and heal
Charlotte French is Staff Nurse (Trauma and Orthopedics), Rotherham
General Hospital, and Aru Narayanasamy is Associate Professor in Nurse
Education, Diversity and Spiritual Health, University of Nottingham
Accepted for publication: March 2011
1198
(Narayanasamy, 1999). Over time, secularization increased and
a more scientific view of medicine emerged (Narayanasamy,
1999; Astrow et al, 2001). Nevertheless, although the NHS
is a secular organization, at times it characterizes Christian
values of caring, compassion and companionship to those
suffering health crises, as well as being tolerant and sensitive
to multi-faiths (McGilloway and Myco, 1984; Narayanasamy
and Owens, 2001; O’Brien, 2003; Hart, 2004). Even during
the renaissance and enlightenment, where the increasingly
scientific practice of medicine began to regard religion as an
obstruction to progress, there remained a great emphasis on
prayer within hospital wards (Castledine, 1998; Astrow et al,
2001). Therefore, prayer and religion have been a significant
part of health care since man first began to consider the
causes of ill health.
Although Western societies are considered to be largely
secular, the UK nursing population and the public have
become more interested than ever before in spiritual issues
within health care (McSherry, 2000; Sloan et al, 2000;
Astrow et al, 2001; McSherry and Ross, 2002; Fawcett and
Noble, 2004; Paley, 2007). Recent research has indicated
proliferation of academic literature dedicated to the topic of
spirituality, the power of prayer, religious faith and survival
(Fontaine, 2000; Benjamins and Brown, 2004; MacLaren,
2004; Rippentrop et al, 2005; Van Dover and Pfeiffer, 2007;
Paley, 2007; Narayanasamy and Narayanasamy, 2008).
Several studies have suggested a correlation between
prayer, religious beliefs, and good physical and mental
health (Koenig, 1997; Hawley and Irurita, 1998; Woods et
al, 1999; Meisenhelder and Chandler, 2001; Coleman et al,
2006; Koch, 2008; Narayanasamy and Narayanasamy, 2008).
Furthermore, other studies have found that participants
receiving intercessory prayer experience significantly better
health outcomes than participants in the control group. For
example:
■■ Studies working with patients in a coronary care unit
(Byrd, 1988; Harris et al, 1999)
■■ Patients with aids (Sicher et al, 1998)
■■ Patients with blood stream infections (Leibovici, 2001)
■■ And women undergoing IVF (Cha et al, 2001).
Equally, there have been studies which have suggested that
prayer does not have a healing effect (Krukoff et al, 2005;
Benson et al, 2006).
The ethics of prayer
Using critical reflections and evidence based-literature, the
author explores the ethics of prayer in terms of the following:
■■ Informed consent in research: is it means to an end?
British Journal of Nursing, 2011, Vol 20, No 18

■■ Informed consent in practice, intentions and authority:
should prayer be prescribed?
■■ The harmful effects of prayer and harmful implications.
Informed consent in research
The heart of ethical research is informed consent (Department
of Health (DH), 2005). Outside of the research context,
individuals would not be obliged to seek written or verbal
consent to perform intercessory prayer on someone else
(Turner, 2006). However, it is universally believed that
informed consent should be sought prior to the beginning of
any study using participants (Parahoo, 2006). The participant
must offer this consent free from any form of pressure, be
fully informed of the implications of the study, and be free
to withdraw at any time (Parahoo, 2006).
Despite this, Harris et al (1999), Leibovici (2001) and Cha
et al (2001) failed to obtain informed consent from their
participants. In the study by Harris et al (1999), ‘informed
consent was not sought and thus patients were not pre-
screened for their willingness to be prayed for’. All of the
patients and staff in each of these studies were blinded
in regards to their group assignment as well as the very
existence of the trial. This denied participants withdrawal
from the study, a fundamental aspect of ethical research. It
is disrespectful and exploitative of an individual’s religious,
philosophical and spiritual integrity to deny them the
opportunity to withdraw from a study (Turner, 2006).
Nevertheless, by not obtaining informed consent, the
researcher can ensure perfect blinding (Leibovici, 2001).
Cha et al (2001) concurred, suggesting that the blinding of
participants to the existence of the study helped to ensure
the isolation of the treatment intervention and eliminate
bias. This is normally done to avert the situation where if
participants’ were aware that they were receiving prayer,
this knowledge may have a placebo effect. However, in the
author’s view, this is not an adequate reason. It is completely
unreasonable to deny informed consent and the chance
to withdraw. Such practices depart from the Nuremberg
Code, which was revised in 1964 and expanded by the
World Health Organization’s Helsinki Declaration. This was
subsequently amended in 1975, 1983, 1989, 1996 and 2000,
to make explicit the ethics on which research on human
participants/subjects will be conducted. It makes obtaining
the patient’s consent essential (National Institutes of Health,
2011). Byrd (1988), Sicher et al (1998), Krukoff et al (2005)
and Benson et al (2006) obtained informed consent from
their participants. However, their studies remained unbiased
as participants were kept blinded to their group assignment.
However, obtaining informed consent meant the sample of
patients recruited by Byrd was all ‘prayer receptive’, as those
who objected to prayer refused to participate (Harris et al,
1999). Ultimately, complete blinding (no informed consent)
was preferred by Harris et al (1999) because it meant bias
could be eliminated, and owing to the sample not being
completely ‘prayer receptive’, the results would have more
generalizability (Harris et al, 1999;Turner, 2006). It is possible
some people may not allow prayer to affect them, i.e. their
unconscious is the ‘gatekeeper’ to their mind (Dossey, 1993).
However, to proceed without gaining informed consent is
British Journal of Nursing, 2011, Vol 20, No 18
ETHICS
an unreasonable solution to this methodological problem
(Turner, 2006). In other prayer studies where participants did
provide informed consent (Byrd, 1988), many people opted
out of the study (Turner, 2006). Just over 12% of patients
refused to participate ‘for personal reasons or religious
convictions’ or were otherwise unwilling to give consent
(Byrd, 1988). This suggests that many of the participants of
Harris et al’s (1999) study would have refused participation
if offered (Turner, 2006).
The Department of Health (2005) requires that any study
using patients must be reviewed by an independent review
board (IRB) to ensure it meets ethical standards. In regards to
informed consent, the hospital’s IRB granted an exemption
for the study by Harris et al (1999) on the following grounds:
■■ There is ‘no known risk with receiving remote, intercessory
prayer’ or for not receiving it (Harris et al, 1999). However,
Krukoff et al (2005) suggested ‘in the absence of knowledge
about mechanism or dose’ of prayer, we should be extra
vigilant to safety such as the use of informed consent
■■ The only information used was that already normally
collected by the hospital (Harris et al, 1999). This was
also the case for Leibovici (2001) and Cha et al (2001).
To many, this may appear unethical as the patients would
be unaware that their medical information was being used
for this purpose. The participants in this study may feel
exploited when they discover they were part of a study
■■ To obtain informed consent may have caused increased
anxiety in some patients, e.g. the distress of not being
in the prayer group or the internal spiritual conflict for
non-religious patients to accept the prayer (Harris et al,
1999). This is an invalid excuse as, if informed consent was
sought, participants would be put under no obligation to
take part in the experiment and would have the right to
leave the experiment at any time.
Means to an end?
How a person views this issue may depend on their moral
temperament (Benn, 2003). In deontology, the idea that
some deeds are good or bad regardless of their consequences,
known as ‘a priori’, may call us to see the need for informed
consent as a moral principle (or categorical imperative)
(Benn, 2003). A priori means ‘what comes before’, according
to Warburton (2004) who added, ‘a priori knowledge is
knowledge that does not depend on the use of the five senses
for its authority’.
However, the opposite of deontology is consequentialism
- ‘the view that actions should be judged entirely by their
consequences’ (Benn, 2003). For example; utilitarianism is
a consequentialist theory which advances that an action
is right if it creates ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest
number of people’, i.e. the consequences of the action
provide pleasure and happiness to most people whom
the action affects (Falzon, 2002). This suggests that if by
not gaining informed consent we can achieve increased
knowledge and benefit potentially thousands of patients, then
this outweighs the harm caused to the small population of
participants included in these studies. However, deontologists
would argue that regardless of the consequences, we cannot
use people solely as a ‘means to an end’. Furthermore, many
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iStockphoto/Josegirarte
would argue that the studies on intercessory prayer are not
methodologically sound, provide only inconclusive results
and have no means to rectify these problems. Hence the
consequences (inconclusive research findings) do not justify
the means (lack of informed consent).
Informed consent in practice
As per research ethics and the Nursing and Midwifery (NMC)
(2008) code of conduct, before beginning any treatment
the nurse must ensure consent is obtained (O’Connor,
2001; Narayanasamy and Narayanasamy, 2008). Like any
treatment, prayer without consent is disrespectful, disregards
the autonomy of the patient, and violates the personal rights
of the patient (Winslow and Winslow, 2003; Maier-Lorentz,
2004; Martin, 2004). Unsolicited prayer can also cause the
patient stress and damage the carer-patient relationship
(Narayanasamy and Narayanasamy, 2008).
However, it should be noted that a nurse may not always
be able to gain consent, e.g., if the patient is unconscious
or mentally lacking capacity to give consent. The Mental
Capacity Act (2005) states that, in this situation, the nurse
must ‘act to provide care or treatment in the best interests of
the patient, and the act will be treated as though the patient
had consented to it’ (Bartlett, 2008). However, nurses may
differ in their opinions about what is in the best interests of
the patient.
Intentions and authority
It is important that nurses pray with the right intentions if
permissible within their scope of practice. Nurses will hold
1200
their own personal, spiritual and religious beliefs, values and
practices. However, when praying with a patient, a nurse
must never cause discomfort or offence by imposing their
own beliefs on the patient if those beliefs are incongruent
with those held by the patient (Johnston Taylor et al, 1999;
Johnston Taylor, 2003). Instead, nurses must respect patients’
values and life plans even if these are radically different from
their own (Winslow and Winslow, 2003).
Without recognizing these distinct values, the nurse is
at great risk of providing disrespectful care (Winslow and
Winslow, 2003). But the nurse should not feel they need
to hide their own beliefs to do this. Many nurses may find
they wish to disclose their own beliefs to help the patient
overcome spiritual conflict (Johnston Taylor et al, 1999).
However, before this self-disclosure, the nurse must question
their motivation (Johnston et al, 1999). To pray ethically, the
nurse must consider if she is praying with the right intentions,
i.e. is she trying to meet the patient’s needs or her own?
(Johnston Taylor, 2003). To answer this, the nurse must use
‘honest introspection’ and reflect on her motivation before
praying with the patient (Johnston Taylor, 2003; Winslow and
Winslow, 2003). Dossey (1993), a North American authority
on spirituality and advocate of prayer as a therapeutic
intervention, believes if we have good intent (compassion,
caring, and love) ‘there is little reason to fear that our prayers
for others without their consent are somehow unethical’.
This may not be a problem in North America, as a majority
of the population are believers, but in the UK, Dossey’s
endorsement faces serious challenges from secular agencies.
As a health professional, the nurse is seen as being in a
position of authority. This authority (legitimized by their
expertise) can greatly influence a patient’s opinion as they
regard the nurse with respect and trust (Sloan et al, 1999).
However, as the NMC (2008) stated: ‘You must not use your
professional status to promote causes that are not related
to health.’ However, while some literature suggests prayer
correlates with good health, the research is inconclusive
which means that to provide respectful care, nurses must
refrain from using their professional authority to promote
their own personal religious practices (Sloan et al, 1999;
Winslow and Winslow, 2003). The clinical setting is certainly
no place for religious proselytizing, and this activity is not
included in the role of the nurse (Johnston Taylor et al, 1999;
Astrow et al, 2001; Winslow and Winslow, 2003).
As the NMC (2008) stated: ‘You must respect and support
people’s rights to accept or decline treatment or care.’ To
push religion on a patient or ‘attempt to convert them
to a particular faith’ is to ‘violate the trust that is basic to
the nurse-client relationship’ (Fontaine, 2000; Targ, 2002;
Winslow and Winslow, 2003). The relationship between a
health professional and the patient is unbalanced, as the nurse
has the most power in the relationship, which means ‘even
well-intended religious advocacy’ would be inappropriate and
threaten the autonomy of the patient (Astrow et al, 2001).
For instance, a devout Christian nurse may view work as
an extension of his or her religious duties, and feel a moral
duty to bring those she or he is nursing into a relationship
with God, in order that they may be saved (Sloan et al,
1999; Fawcett and Noble, 2004). However, including the
British Journal of Nursing, 2011, Vol 20, No 18
 Christian faith in one’s nursing care can be a task ‘fraught
with landmines of political correctness and sensibilities’
(Fawcett and Noble, 2004). It is out of compassion that
a nurse may want to share the freedom and wholeness of
Christianity (Fawcett and Noble, 2004). It is not that they
are pushing a personal agenda, but rather doing what they
think is best for the patient’s wellbeing in the future. After
all, the nurse makes a commitment to ensure, protect, and
prioritize the wellbeing of the vulnerable patient (Winslow
and Winslow, 2003). However, to encourage patients to
enter a relationship with God does not correlate with
current imperatives of professional practice (Fawcett and
Noble, 2004). Although, if a nurse believes it is a religious
duty to proselytise, is it fair for an employer to stop them?
Should we create legislation or jurisdictional boundaries to
deal with this problem? (Pesut and Thorne, 2007). If so, is it
possible to do so?
An example of this (as reported in the media in February
2009) is the recent case of Mrs Petrie, a Christian community
nurse who was suspended without pay (The Telegraph, 2009)
following an incident where she offered prayer to a patient
(Alderson, 2009). While she has now been reinstated, she
was suspended from her job for apparently breaching the
NMC code (2008) based on the instruction:
‘You must not use your professional status to
promote causes that are not related to health’
and:
‘You must demonstrate a personal and
professional commitment to equality and
diversity’ (Alderson, 2009).
This case created a national debate amongst health
professionals and the public. This could be seen on the
website of The Daily Telegraph which began a petition to
support Ms Petrie’s reinstatement (Anon, 2009a).
A nurse must find harmony between her personal religious
beliefs/duties and her professional/tolerant role as a nurse
(Winslow and Winslow, 2003; Pesut and Thorne, 2007).
We live in a liberal country which places neutrality and
acceptance of others above all, but a highly religious nurse
who believes strongly about praying for patients may feel
compelled to ignore man-made laws and social convention as
God overrules them and to ignore their religious duty would
be unfaithful (Curlin and Hall, 2005; Pesut and Thorne, 2007).
Nurses are expected to make a decision about how to include
their beliefs and values in practice without compromising the
ingrained social values of neutrality and religious acceptance
(Pesut and Thorne, 2007).
While it is imperative to not push a personal agenda
during prayer, a nurse should equally not pray in a way that
is incongruent with his or her own beliefs. For example, it
would be unethical to expect an atheistic or humanist nurse
to pray to a God or deity with a religious patient as it would
betray the personal beliefs of that nurse (Johnston Taylor,
2003). Praying when your beliefs are different to that of the
patient ‘can be interpreted as an insincere effort to share
someone else’s faith’ and ‘remaining true to one’s own beliefs
is an act of integrity’ (Branch et al, 2006). Furthermore, a
1202
nurse must justify the trust placed in them by patients, by
being open and honest and acting with integrity (Winslow
and Winslow, 2003; NMC, 2008). By masking his or her
religious faith, the nurse may offend a patient who would
rather have a secular nurse care for them (Curlin and Hall,
2005). In relation to prayer, this means that for a nurse to
appear sincere, authentic and ethical, they must pray only in a
way that reflects their own personal beliefs (Johnston Taylor,
2003; Winslow and Winslow, 2003). Inauthentic prayer has no
place in a trusting nurse-patient relationship where respectful
care is a prerequisite (Winslow and Winslow, 2003).
Should prayer be prescribed?
Nurses and health professionals engage in moral persuasion
on a daily basis to encourage patients to follow difficult
therapies because they have been validated by evidence-
based practice (Curlin and Hall, 2005). However, there
is a ‘double standard and a secular bias’ in regards to
recommending spiritual practices within health care (Curlin
and Hall, 2005). For example, it is much easier and less
ethically problematic for a health professional to advocate
for smoking cessation than to encourage particular spiritual
or religious practices (Pesut and Thorne, 2007). However,
some would argue that encouraging patients to adopt
religious practices such as prayer is legitimate in the same
way as encouraging low fat diets is acceptable (Astrow et al,
2001). Nonetheless, unlike recommending antibiotics for
pneumonia, recommending religion can have a coercive
effect which raises ethical questions surrounding the
patient’s autonomy (Sloan et al, 2000). Nevertheless, if
prayer is as beneficial as many empirical studies suggest,
and nurses wish to care for their patients’ wellbeing, then
the value of praying with patients should be seriously
considered (Winslow and Winslow, 2003).
However, if these studies are proved valid, religious
practice would also join socioeconomic status and marital
status as factors which significantly affect health (Sloan et
al, 1999). It is generally agreed that a health professional
should not prescribe a patient to get married or improve
their financial situation to achieve better health (Sloan et al,
1999). Matters of money and marital issues are considered
private, and not the business of health professionals, despite
well-documented evidence of health outcomes (Sloan et al,
1999). Many people will ‘regard their religious faith as even
more personal and private than their health’ (Sloan et al,
2000). Furthermore, it is unlikely that the recommendation
to increase attendance of religious services would actually
increase attendance, let alone improve health (Sloan et al,
2000).
As nurses, we must promote health and restoration
which requires nurses to have specialized knowledge about
what is good and right for health (Pesut and Thorne,
2007). If spirituality is considered part of health, then it
logically follows that part of the nurses’ role would be to
hold knowledge about what practices are good and right
to promote spiritual health (Pesut and Thorne, 2007).
However, it is considered inappropriate for a nurse to
prescribe or coerce a patient to take up or relinquish prayer
or other spiritual practices (Johnston Taylor, 2003; White,
British Journal of Nursing, 2011, Vol 20, No 18

2006). This would be deemed offensive and ‘outside the
bounds of legitimate medical practice’ (Astrow et al, 2001).
It would be extremely unethical to appear judgemental or
critical of any spiritual or religious practice that a patient may
live by (Pesut and Thorne, 2007).
Equally, many question whether or not patients should
be encouraged to cease spiritual behaviours which their
caregivers consider to be detrimental to good health
(Winslow and Winslow, 2003). For example, a palliative care
patient may believe ‘If I pray hard enough, I will be healed’
which may suggest they have unrealistic hopes which could
lead to spiritual distress (Johnston Taylor, 2003). But should
the nurse advise the patient to reconsider their prayer? The
response to this question is that, ultimately, it is up to patients
to exercise their autonomy to decide whether they would
like to pray or not.
The harmful effects of prayer
As with any research or therapeutic intervention, the
potential for negative effects following prayer is a significant
concern (Johnston Taylor, 1999; DiJoseph and Cavendish,
2005; Turner, 2006). Furthermore, it could be said that those
who argue there are no harmful side effects to intercessory
prayer are making ‘controversial and undefended theological
assumptions’ (Turner, 2006). Nevertheless, outside of the
research and the health care practice environment, prayer
has no known negative effects; however; this may not be
true in the research context (Turner, 2006). For example;
Benson et al (2006) found patients who were aware that
they were receiving intercessory prayer actually experienced
more complications following coronary artery bypass graft
surgery than those who either did not know they were
receiving prayer or those who were not receiving prayer.
It has been argued that negative effects such as these only
occur in the research context as God may disapprove of the
scientific study of prayer and allow more harm to come
to those being prayed for (Turner, 2006). There may even
be a law of reversed effect in prayer and other telesomatic
reactions, i.e. the more we try to make something happen;
the less likely it is to occur (Dossey, 1993).
There is the potential that participating in a research
study on intercessory prayer could lead to spiritual distress,
i.e. if a participant discovered following the study that they
were in the intervention group but did not receive healing,
they may feel let down and distrust in God (Wright,
2005). This could include doubting whether prayer works,
whether God listens or whether their prayers are accurate
(Johnston Taylor et al, 1999). If the benefit of religion and
prayer are confirmed, we risk causing distress in people
who feel they did not pray enough, as whether a person
holds religious beliefs or not, they will inevitably succumb
to illness and death (Sloan et al, 1999). We must not create
an extra burden of guilt for our patients by allowing them
to believe their own lack of religious practice caused their
illness (Sloan et al, 1999). To instigate this kind of mentality,
we would be regressing to ancient times when illness was
seen as caused by wrongdoings and wellbeing was a reward
earned by benevolent deeds.
Furthermore, we must be careful not to use prayer for
British Journal of Nursing, 2011, Vol 20, No 18
ETHICS
unrealistic cures, as we would only instil unrealistic hopes
within the patient which would be unethical and damaging.
(Maier-Lorentz, 2004).
Harmful implications
As well as the potential to cause harm to a participant
or patient, to validate the effectiveness of prayer could
potentially open a ‘Pandora’s Box’ of implications (Curlin
and Hall, 2005). For example, the potential would arise for
physicians to ‘persuade, manipulate, or even coerce patients to
abandon or change their religious creeds’ (Curlin and Hall,
2005). Questions would be asked such as: would a researcher
be able to sabotage another competing colleague’s work
purely by praying and thinking malevolent thoughts? (Dossey
and Hufford, 2005). Moreover, if experimenter’s personal
cognitive processes must be taken into account, how can the
initial conditions of the experiment be accurately replicated?
(Dossey and Hufford, 2005).
Implications and recommendations
There is no doubt that further research is required to attempt
to answer the ethical questions raised in this article. To start to
approach these questions, we need to design and implement
qualitative studies of patients which ask questions such as:
■■ Do patients want nurses to offer prayer or would they be
offended?
■■ What experience do patients have of being offered prayer
from nurses?
Until these issues are resolved, we recommend that nurses
to only offer prayer if they have received consent, provided
local policies and protocols are in place to support prayer
as a therapeutic intervention. It is always best to check
with the local department of spirituality and pastoral care
for further guidance and support in matters of spirituality
and prayer. If practitioners use prayer as part of caring
practice, they must have benevolent intentions (Beauchamp
and Childress, 2001), treat the patient with respect, and be
aware of the potential for abuse of authority (Narayanasamy
and Narayanasamy, 2008). We must encourage our nurses
to reflect on their motivation for offering prayer. Ideally,
we need some consensus within the practice setting about
what would be in the patient’s best interests. However, it
is most important that we keep the debate alive among
the public and health professionals, as well as within the
literature about the role of spirituality and prayer in nursing
and practice.
Conclusion
To conclude, a multitude of ethical problems surround the
use of prayer within health care. While lack of informed
consent may be seen by some as necessary for perfect
blinding and a non-prayer-receptive sample, there is the
view that it is unethical and such studies should be halted. In
regards to practice, a nurse must also obtain consent before
providing prayer, but adhere to local policies and protocols
in regard to prayer. A nurse should have the qualities of
integrity, compassion, authenticity, and an ability to provide
respectful, honest self-disclosure. A nurse should not abuse
the authority placed in them, promote their own religious
1203
 causes, or use self-disclosure in an insensitive way. They
must find the delicate balance between their professional
role as a nurse and their more personal, religious role as an
individual. It appears too premature to suggest prescribing
prayer, as many would argue that without clear evidence
from rigorous trials, we cannot legitimize the prescription
of prayer or distant healing (Targ, 2002). BJN
Conflict of interest: none declared
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n Intercessory prayer may have healing potentials but remains untested
n The ethics of prayer should be fully considered in nursing practice
n A clearer policy and protocol is needed to guide nurses about prayer in
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n Nurses need to reconcile their personal views of prayers with those of
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n Further prayer research is required to guide evidence based practice
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British Journal of Nursing, 2011, Vol 20, No 18
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Copyright of British Journal of Nursing (BJN) is the property of Mark Allen Publishing Ltd and its content may
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