Presented by Ruth McCabe, Manager of Milestone House HIV and AIDS hospice. - Jesus as healer - an inspiration. - The story of Reher: medieval jester and monk, founder of St Bartholomew's Hospital London. - Christian symbols in medicine: nursing sisters, chaplains and St John Ambulance. - Pioneering the hospice movement. - Developing the hospice environment: a safe place for all. - Providing unconditional love and support.
	Download all the documents for this section in Acrobat PDF format. This document includes the transcript of the video, the activities and the collective worship.
	My name is Ruth McCabe. I'm manager of Milestone House, which is an HIV and AIDS hospice in Edinburgh. I am a Christian and I find the way that Jesus cares for people inspires me in what I do. Here in this hospice, I try to follow his example by creating a safe place where people of all backgrounds can be cared for in both a physical and a spiritual way. But what goes on here is nothing new. Jesus's example of healing has motivated Christians to care for others for many centuries. Just how many is reflected in this ancient document. It's a grant, drawn up by monk called Reher to raise money for a hospital he founded back in 1123. Today, Reher's shrine is in the church of St Bartholomew the Great in London. But he hadn't always lived a religious life. Before becoming a monk he was a jester in the court of Henry 1. When he became a monk, though, he went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and on the way he became seriously ill. Turning to prayer, he vowed that if he was healed he would go back to England and found a hospital for the welfare of others. He did recover, and when he got home he founded this monastery to care for the poor and sick of London. He named it after the saint to whom he accredited his recovery, St Bartholomew. This place of prayer soon became known as a place of healing and St Bart's, as it's better known today, has been providing health care for the people of London for over eight hundred years. But while St Bart's may be one of the earliest reminders of Christianity's influence on our health services, it's far from the only one. There are lots of other symbols revealing its Christian roots. The Charge Nurses you will find on any ward today were until recently called 'Sisters', a title reflecting the work of the nuns who often acted as nurses in the monasteries. In every modern hospital and hospice you will still find spiritual care available, now provided by Chaplains, paid for by the NHS and available to patients of every faith. And even outside the hospital the signs are still there, especially in St John Ambulance whose roots go back to an order of knights founded in the twelfth century to protect pilgrims and care for the sick. More recently, individual Christians have influenced healthcare - people like Dame Cicely Saunders who pioneered the modern hospice movement, where the combination of physical and spiritual care that Reher would have known has re-emerged. But Reher's grant reminds me of even more than that. I believe that however, and wherever people are cared for, in hospital, in a hospice or at home, we need to pay attention to their heads, their hearts and their spirits. We need to see them as individual and special people and, just like Jesus, to provide them with unconditional love and support.