Thanks for asking this question; it's near and dear to my heart. The current book that I'm just about to turn into the publisher [revising a late draft this morning] is my non-theological answer to that question. ( http://intermountainhealthcare.org/hospitals/imed/services/heart-institute/about/pages/news.aspx?newsid=1736 )

What I think has become most clear to me in my research, writing, and practice as it takes me across many traditional boundaries of culture and scholarship, is the centrality of community and interdependence. These are central enough themes that I don't think you need to be religious at all to value them. I am extremely careful not to make any assumptions about the religious/spiritual beliefs of patients and families or to interject my own religious convictions into discussions or decision making. With those caveats in mind, I bring to the bedside in the ICU a conviction that our duty is to honor and support the individuals whose lives are threatened by catastrophic illness. As we clinicians do so, we mourn with those who mourn, we acknowledge our basic powerlessness before the horrifying mystery of our own mortality, and we commit in honesty and mutual respect to walk with patients and their families through medical crisis. And we must simultaneously bring to bear our very best technical knowledge and acumen to address what we can of the physical problems. It is, and must be, a package of both the deeply human and the highly technical.

On the specifically religious question you pose, the answer is rather more complex. It's important to acknowledge and honor the feelings of abandonment that such a parent is expressing in the midst of crisis. It is desperately hard to feel that God is with us when a child's life is threatened, and we should rally in support of individuals in such crisis. And we needn't assume that the theology expressed at times of great distress is necessarily normative, even as we rally to support the individuals who express that theology.

I'm aware of the strange medical literature on petitionary prayer, which strikes me as both bad science and bad religion. If that's the sense of prayer you mean, then I'm comfortable with the notion that prayer doesn't do a thing, but that's a limited understanding of prayer. I believe, strongly, that we human beings can act as the body of Christ and that prayer, especially when it is shared and communicated, can be the lifeblood of that spiritual body, which, for religious individuals, can be a crucial contributor to the ultimate outcomes of both patients and families during medical crisis.