AMEN Australia 2019 Conference: Witnesses Unto Me

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

Robert Granger

Spiritual Conversation Starters

And I really took these statements like this to heart.

When I was going through medical school as a mature age student and I'd sit down there not only with my medical textbooks but with counselors on health and ministry of healing and you come across these kinds of statements and I realised that When I was all said and done with my training, I needed to do things a little different than just the run of the mill, what a typical doctor would do out there.

I felt very much a desire to want to involve myself in a different way.

And look, Antoinette's got a fascinating book over there on display, and I would encourage you to have a look at that if you haven't seen it, Grey Matter.

Here's a neurosurgeon who prays with his patients.

In fact, his introductory story is quite interesting as well, how he was really challenged by this whole notion and the difficulty that he had in so doing So this is not only Adventists who are you know, basically engaging their patients in spiritual conversations I think of dr.

Brian Schwartz who's the amen president there in the US for those of you who heard him in person this year in Sydney.

How does 1 go about praying with his patients?

He says that with very few exceptions he pretty well prays with all of his patients.

But I'm thinking to myself, is there more to engaging a person in a spiritual conversation over and above just simply praying.

But it's not without its challenges and I think that we'd all recognise that when we engage patients in a spiritual conversation we could be at risk of nasty things happening.

So for example, this is a case of a nurse over in the UK, prayed for her patients, she would sing hymns, she would hand out Bible, she would do other things and she's in deep trouble as a result of that.

Richard Scott, GP, prays with his patients.

It's just once in a while he'll pray with a patient.

Here in Australia, Doctors can be deregistered for their personal beliefs and expressing those to patients.

There's this code of conduct, good medical practice with APRA, and it makes life sometimes a little challenging for us as to how we go about dealing with things.

And here is a case of a doctor who retweeted a comment about same-sex marriage that is not in keeping with society's current views, and he's in trouble.

There was a number of submissions that were put to APRA about effectively wanting doctors to be protected against being effectively persecuted for expressing their religious views.

You can find this public information, public domain, and there it is.

I mean, here is a case, I contacted APRA about this particular case in 2016.

A medical doctor in the ACT who had expressed personal religious beliefs and was reprimanded for so doing and I was pretty keen to find out some more details De-identified but tell me what was going on behind this particular case APRA wouldn't release anything to me.

So I'm still none the wiser And so there's a number of ways in which you might want to engage in a spiritual conversation.

There's nothing wrong, for example, and this is absolutely legitimate, there's nothing wrong with, for example, taking a spiritual history.

In the same way as we might a medication history, family history, whatever history, social history, it's absolutely legitimate to take a spiritual history and 1 can do that in a nice way.

And there's different questionnaires, different mnemonics to express those.

1 personally that I kind of use in a loose kind of a way is this 1 here called the open invite mnemonic where effectively you open the door to a conversation and then you allow the conversation to then flow after that.

And what I would like to do, well just now this evening, is I guess basically ask the question, let me just ask the question, do we and should we consider prayer as the Holy Grail, that is if we don't pray for a patient we have not engaged them in a spiritual conversation or are there other things and other means to achieve a spiritual conversation?

And I guess the other question is how far are you prepared to go in starting a conversation or engaging a patient in a conversation?

Or are you a little concerned perhaps by this potential threat of regulatory authorities, et cetera?

And I want to share simply what I've done amongst others.

And there's a number of approaches that I take but 1 of the approaches that I take and I want to share that with you is is basically trying to create an atmosphere in my practice to have patients ask the questions and engage me and I in turn then feel at liberty to talk further.

Some people will bite at this and others won't.

Most, it will just sort of go over their heads, but occasionally, And I shouldn't say occasionally because there's probably hardly a day that goes by when there's not some conversation that ensues.

And I want to share that with you tonight.

I'm a dermatologist in Solo Private Practice in Bunbury, Western Australia, which is about 2 hours south of Perth.

I have 2 and a half receptionists working for me, a nurse, and my wife who acts as a practice manager in a very part-time capacity.

And when people walk through the door, and in fact, I've got to say that, you know, even before walking in the door, I believe it's important for our patients to know that we're a Christian.

We're a Christian in sort of a total capacity.

That is that there's a sense of orderliness, there's a sense of cleanliness, of tidiness.

I'm a stickler for not having weeds in the footpath out the front, you know, the grass has got to be right, everything's got to be right.

Because they're, subconsciously, they're taking all that in.

Is this an orderly, is this an orderly doctor?

Is he, is, you know, can I trust my skin to him?

Can I trust him doing a good repair if he's got, you know, sloppy front, you know?

So that is also starting to, you know, prepare them for then what they experience when they step inside.

And so when they step in, you know, straight away in the waiting room, they're gonna see, and I realise this doesn't come up quite as good as in real life, it really doesn't, but right there you're going to see you step in the front door and you cannot help but miss seeing Nathan Green's painting of this surgeon working away and Jesus standing in the background, entitled the Chief of the Medical Staff.

Now, Nathan Green doesn't know this, but effectively, I've done my decor throughout the building, carpeting, chairs, et cetera, based on picking up colors that are actually in that particular painting.

People will come in and they'll see that painting along with some of the others.

So they will see this 1 on a wall, they'll see this 1, they'll walk into my office and that's right above my desk again it's a very large painting and it's just right there above my desk.

They cannot help but see that and immediately it starts conversations going for some people.

They might comment about it, they might say you know what I've really liked those paintings can you tell me a little bit more about that?

So Nathan Green a few years ago was interviewed on 3ABN.

I've got a whole heap of copies of that interview and I'll often just pass them on and say, look, check this out.

Or this is what this artist is all about.

I say, see up there and you can't see it up there, but up there there's like a certificate up there, his medical certificate with Loma Linda University written on it.

I said the originals of that are in Loma Linda University.

As it turns out I've studied at Loma Linda and seen my certificate over there and it shows the same Loma Linda and they start to get excited.

It creates these connections like wow, so tell me more about this.

It was a gentleman who brought along his, from memory, about 20 years old daughter.

And the daughter had fragile X syndrome and with a severe intellectual disability as a consequence.

And he brought her in and we had the consultation.

I scripted her for a few products and they went on their way.

And just before going, I thought to myself, wow, she's an intellectual, you know, disability, but boy, she's a really beautiful looking girl.

And in fact, as my, as she went out, my wife was on reception at that time and my wife said to, unbeknownst to me at the time, she said to the dad, ìWow, your daughterís just so beautiful.

Sheís got beautiful skin, dark hair, but she couldnít engage in conversation at all.

She wasnít able to do so.î Anyway, and the dad says, ìYeah, she just blows me away.î And off they went.

About 3 weeks later, my wife gets a phone call from this time from the mother.

And mum says, Look, I just want some further instructions about that cream.

Darlene calls her back and she says, look, I just want to say 1 more thing.

I couldn't bring my daughter in on the day because I was having a colonoscopy.

And as it turns out, I've been diagnosed with colon cancer.

She said my husband told me and he said nothing to me or to Darlene, he told me about these these paintings that you guys had on your walls.

So we sort of did some Googling and we came across them and we printed off some colour copies and that's just been so meaningful for me going through what I'm going through.

She says and then my aunt who was in hospital at the time undergoing some serious procedures, We told her about the painting.

So we took a painting in, put it beside the bedroom on her bedside cabinet there.

And it gave her so much peace with everything that she was passing through.

The nurses, the doctors would come in and comment about this particular painting.

So she said, you know, your paintings in your rooms have already had quite an impact.

Eternity is only gonna tell where this story is gonna end up.

I have on a wall glow tracks, steps to Christ.

We keep a track of how many of those tracks actually disappear.

There's certain ones that are a whole lot more popular than others, and that's sort of an interesting story in itself.

I had a female Anglican priest come in recently.

In fact, I have a receptionist who's a seventh-day venest and when my wife is more fully in the practice, she would always call me up or she'd come racing to the room, your next patient has just picked up a couple of glow tracks, you know, or they've been thumbing through a, you know, what have you.

Spiritual Conversation Starters

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