Magic Statistics

 Watch for on-the-job back injuries to increase among UK hospital nurses.

British hospitals, like those in most of the world, barely have enough nurses to perform essential health care services.  Now medical staff in West Yorkshire have been urged to indulge the preferences of members of a particular religion.  Guess which one.

[N]urses are being encouraged to spend valuable time turning around the beds of Muslim patients up to five times a day - so they can face Mecca.

In a bid to promote cultural understanding, they are also expected to provide patients with running water so they can wash before prayer.

And then, of course, they are required to turn the beds back around to return the wards to normality. The measures are being pursued by Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust to ensure Muslim patients have a "more comfortable stay in hospital".

What about the comfort of patients who go into cardiac arrest while nurses are down the hall rotating beds?

The scheme has been blasted by a Yorkshire nurse (whose name is not given, one assumes to avoid job discipline of some sort) and by Conservative MP David Davies, who said:

"Hospitals should be concentrating on stopping the spread of infections than kowtowing to the politically-correct brigade."

I wonder how many hospitals in Muslim countries provide prayer rooms for Christian patients.

Previous related posts:

• Muslim bars doctor from operating room
• Church nurses are on the job
• Irish nurses in job action; British nurses threaten same

UPDATE (6 Dec.): Hospital officials have thought better of this plan.  Staff will be asked to provide the service only for the terminally ill.  (h/t: Religion News Blog)

A month ago in Kimmirut, Nunavut, RCMP Const. Douglas Scott was shot and killed while responding to a report of an impaired driver.  He answered the late-night call by himself.

It has now emerged that an e-mail sent last June instructed detachment commanders in Nunavut to provide an explanation every time RCMP officers answer calls in pairs.

In a June e-mail to detachment commanders in Nunavut, an e-mail that was obtained by CBC News, a senior regional officer wrote that while reviewing overtime claims he noticed some units sent two members to all calls.

"The direction that I am giving you, the detachment commander, is to ensure that you and the member(s) under your command base your response to calls on appropriate risk assessment," he wrote in the e-mail.

"Note on all OT claims how many members responded to every call. When more then [sic] one member responds to a call provide an explanation."

In October, Const. Christopher Worden was shot dead in Hay River, NWT, while responding to a call alone.

RCMP Sgt Dan Laurence, who spent four years in Nunavut, thinks officers should always have backup.

"Someone died because we're trying to save a dollar perhaps," said RCMP Sgt. Dan Laurence, who worked in Nunavut for four years, including one year at the RCMP's two-person detachment in Kimmirut.
. . .
"We should have no members going to a call alone. Never. In any situation, regardless of years of service and all that because you know what? A bullet doesn't recognize if you've got 25 years service or five months service."

RCMP top brass have some 'splainin' to do.