He works as a nurse in a hospital and cannot help touching women when treating them
Question I work as a nurse in a hospital ward for patients with breathing problems. There are men on one side and women on the other. I cannot help touching the sick women when giving them treatment only, and with no other intention. I cannot move to any other ward because every ward has the…
Question
Praise be to Allah.
The basic principle is that treatment and nursing of women
should be done by female doctors and nurses, because of what is involved in
treatment of looking and examining. But if there is no female doctor or
nurse, it is permissible for that to be done by a man. But there is no doubt
that finding female nurses is something easy and readily done if the people
in charge of the hospitals want to do that. It is very sad and unfortunate
that some hospitals delegate female nurses to take care of men and male
nurses to take care of women. This is indicative of weakness in religious
commitment and a lack of proper supervision, and a lack of attention to the
rulings of Islam.
Hence we advise you to try hard to limit your work to
treating men only, even if that means moving to a ward where that is
accepted. If that is not possible, then there is nothing wrong with you
continuing in your work and treating women, on condition that you adhere to
the following guidelines:
1.Do not look at anything except
that which is necessary, and fear Allaah with regard to that. You can be
certain that Allaah is watching you and recording your deeds.
2.Do not touch any part of the
patient’s body without a barrier. So you should always wear gloves when
treating women, and even so, do not touch anything but that which it is
necessary to touch.
3.Limit your talking to the
female patient to what is necessary.
4.Do not be alone with a female
patient in an examination room or x-ray room and so on. Rather she should
have her mahram or another woman with her, whose presence leads to avoidance
of improper conduct, such as her mother for example, or other female
patients.
See also the answer to question number
9989 and
112061.
We ask Allaah to forgive you and make things easy for you.
And Allaah knows best.
