BIBLES have been restored to bedside lockers at Macclesfield General Hospital, in Cheshire: something not seen since before the pandemic, when fears of cross-infection led to their removal from hospitals throughout the UK.
They are being provided by the organisation Good News for Everyone, formerly the Gideons. They are available in the shape of shrink-wrapped scriptures — typically the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverb — that patients can unwrap, use, and take home, or that could be cleaned and returned to the locker for the subsequent occupant.
Wendy Moss, a nurse who has worked on the hospital since 1978, is a licensed lay minister, and chairs the Cheshire North branch of Good News for Everyone. “Most people know us as Gideons, but we’re the identical people, doing the identical work, just with a special name,” she said.
“The presence of the Gideon Bible was all the time a continuing comfort and reassurance for a lot of patients, until their removal during Covid. . . We’re very grateful to the East Cheshire NHS Trust for all the assistance and support they’ve given us in achieving [the return of the Bibles], and, from this month, we’ll be distributing them a ward at a time.”
Concerns have surfaced intermittently through the years. Hospitals in Leicester expressed uneasiness in regards to the possible risk of MRSA infection, in 2005, within the absence of covers that might not be cleaned effectively if stained or contaminated.
But, after studying research findings in 2010, Nottingham University Hospitals Trust was one which decided to not ban the bedside Bibles but to maintain them in removable, washable holders and protective covers, and to introduce single-use Bibles on wards for patients with virulent infections.
A ward sister on an Acute Admissions Unit at Tameside Hospital has testified to the distress of working on an acute Covid ward throughout the pandemic, when many individuals who were dying had nobody but nurses to carry their hands.
“Our work became frightening, emotionally and physically draining,” she told Good News for Everyone. “As I called out to the Lord on many occasions, he gave me many comforting words of scripture, especially Psalm 46 — ‘Be still and know that I’m God.’ This psalm I read over and all over again from my Bible which I carry in my pocket at work. I desired to thanks for putting Bibles within the hospital.
“Other members of staff heard me reading to patients, and remarked, ‘What lovely poems they’re.’ I had many opportunities to witness to staff, and a few of them read these psalms to patients and in addition carried these Bibles of their scrubs pockets.
“We had no church ministers available within the hospital; so your Bibles have been an actual blessing and lightweight on this dark situation.”
