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Page 177
Healing in Hospitals
I learned that Therapeutic Touch was highly controversial among nurses, doctors, and hospital administrators. The director of the nursing program at the community college in Eugene told me that she was very skeptical of TT, but since many nurses were requesting it and speaking highly of my class, and since the course brought money into the department, she would continue to list it on the class schedule. (A workshop on TT for hospital nurses had filled two sessions, each with over three hundred registrants.) The nurses who attended the workshops were excited, but their supervisors and scornful co-workers were not. The phenomenon of Therapeutic Touch was apparently polarizing the local nursing community. TT students told stories of supervisors forbidding them to use the method, and of signs posted in the nurses' entry declaring "There will be NO HEALING done in this hospital."
Nonetheless, many nurses became aware that I did healing, and throughout my twenty years of residence in Oregon, they referred patients to me both inside and outside of hospitals. Furthermore, patients who knew about Therapeutic Touch requested it from the night nurses, who were less likely to be discovered and criticized. Also, much of night nurses' work involves ministering to patients experiencing pain or stress, and many members of the late shift knew that TT was often effective under those conditions.
In order to have Therapeutic Touch administered in some hospitals, the regulations were that a patient had to have a prescription for it. I was told that the hospital was legally liable for all therapy administered therein, and they didn't want to be responsible for something as controversial as laying on of hands healing. However, it wasn't possible for me to treat only those with a prescription. I was usually asked to treat someone who was in severe pain, critically injured, or near death, as soon as possible; and I would act immediately at the request of the responsible family member. Usually, nurses referred family members of critically ill or injured patients to me after all available medical treatments had been applied, but had proved insufficient for healing or pain management.

 
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