NHS nurse Sarah Kuteh has been fired from her job at Darent Valley Hospital for talking to her patients about Christ, offering Bibles, and encouraging them to sing worship songs.
Kuteh was let go in 2016 for allegedly breaching the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) rules.
Last week, the Court of Appeal upheld that the decision was just due to Kuteh’s ‘gross misconduct’ in the workplace.
On June 3, 2016, one particular patient complained about Kuteh’s actions, likening them to a ‘Monty Python skit.’
The nurse offered a Bible to the cancer patient and also encouraged him to sing ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’:
“(She) told him she would give him her Bible if he did not have one; gripped his hand tightly and said a prayer that was very intense and went ‘on and on’; and asked him to sing Psalm 23 [The Lord is My Shepherd] after which he was so astounded that he had sung the first verse with her.
“He described the encounter as ‘very bizarre’ and ‘like a Monty Python skit.”
The patient had answered ‘open-minded’ to the question on the assessment relating to religious beliefs, and he claimed Kuteh had told him that Jesus was the only way that he could get to the Lord.
Court documents reflected that the 50-year-old NHS nurse had breached the NMC rules in a variety of other instances as well.
In April 2016, one patient claimed that Kuteh “spent more time talking about religion than doing the assessment,” while another stated they didn’t want to see her because they “didn’t like preaching.”
However, Kuteh says her actions have been misconstrued by the court and the media, as she never forced her religion on any of her patients.
In the same month, the nurse was accused of telling a bowel cancer patient that “if he prayed to God he would have a better chance of survival.”