chairman bill wrote:That's one day a week, pay is pro-rata, 8 patients, and is "to enable them to cope with the emotional, physical and spiritual issues of dealing with their cancer journey."
So if a bit of woo helps some people cope emotionally & psychologically, why not?
Ah Reiki - woo invented in the 1920s masquerading as some sort of ancient healing practise. Concentrated woo if you will.
My fiancé is trained in Reiki, amongst the various other forms of therapeutic massage she's qualified in. I can tell you that Reiki is very pleasant, very soothing, but that could be just as much about the person doing it to me as anything else. As a technique, its actual physical benefits (compared to the vastly more useful sports massage she knows) are nil. But it is relaxing, which has some virtue for anyone going through a stressful experience like cancer treatment.
So I can see that as a plus. Just so long as we're clear that all this "energy transference stuff" is utter bollocks.
As for the spiritual healer bit, I'm guessing that Princess Alexandra Hospital clearly thinks that all its patients are gullible fuckwits, desperate for some mystical woo peddler to realign their chakras and make the nasty bad stuff go away whilst the chemo does its works.
Why not - just actually hire a proper therapist trained in counselling? You know, for all the non-gullible types who are not going to take kindly to someone spouting spiritual BS at them whilst they go through a very difficult time.
Seriously, you can do the whole helping people cope emotionally & mentally without recourse to woo.
"One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion." - Arthur C Clarke
"'Science doesn't know everything' - Well science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop" - Dara O'Brian