“Heal the Sick, Cast Out Demons”: What Jesus Commissioned His Followers to Do With Healing

By Hayley Louisa Mark

The first time I prayed for someone else’s healing out loud, my hands were shaking and my mouth went dry, and the loudest voice in the room was the one in my own head asking who do you think you are? She was lying on a sofa with a wet cloth across her eyes, my friend, and she had asked me — me, a writer who is sure of almost nothing — to pray. And I stood there in the gap between wanting to help and feeling like a fraud, certain that healing belonged to people with more authority than I had: pastors, elders, the spiritually impressive, anyone but the ordinary, doubting woman in the kitchen doorway with a tea towel still over her shoulder. Maybe you know that exact paralysis. Someone you love is sick — a parent, a child, a friend at the end of the phone — and they have turned to you, and you do not know whether you are allowed to pray for their body, or by what right, or with what words, or whether reaching for healing on their behalf is presumptuous, even dangerous. That doorway is where this page is written from.

Because here is the thing I did not know, standing in that doorway: Jesus did not keep healing to Himself. He handed it to people exactly as unqualified as me. He gathered twelve ordinary men — fishermen, a tax collector, a doubter or two — and the verse that should steady your shaking hands is the one He spoke when He sent them out: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). And then, lest anyone think it was a one-off for an inner circle, He did it again with seventy more (Luke 10). This is the commissioning — the moment healing changed from something you watched Jesus do to something He sent His followers to go and do, in His name and on His authority, not their own. This page is a how-to for the one standing in the doorway: what it means that you were sent, what that authority actually is (and just as honestly, what it is not), and how to pray for someone else’s healing without turning a gift into a weapon or a guilt.

The short answer. The bible verse cast out demons heal the sick is Matthew 10:8, spoken when Jesus sent out the twelve: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). He gave them real authority — “power against unclean spirits, and to heal all manner of sickness” (Matthew 10:1) — and later sent seventy more on the same errand (Luke 9:1-2; Luke 10:9). The commission means ordinary followers were sent to pray for the sick in His name. But the authority was delegated (it is His power, not yours), it was not a guarantee of every outcome (even the disciples once “could not” — Matthew 17:16), and it is held honestly: pray boldly, point people to real medical care, and never weaponise the gift into “you’d be healed if someone had enough faith.” This is not medical advice.

Please read this before we go further. I am a writer who loves Scripture, not a clinician, and this is a reflection, not medical advice. Nothing on this page diagnoses, treats, or cures any illness, and praying for someone’s healing is never a substitute for their doctor. If you are about to pray for someone who is sick, the most loving thing you can do alongside praying is help them get and keep real medical care — the appointment, the medicine, the specialist, the helpline. The disciples were sent to heal, and the church was also given doctors like Luke, “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14); these were never rivals. And here is the honesty I owe you before you read one commissioning verse. It would be easy to take “heal the sick, cast out demons” and turn it into a formula — if you just have the authority and the faith, the body must obey — and then to quietly blame the sick person, or yourself, when it doesn’t. The Bible will not let me do that to you. The very disciples Jesus commissioned came to a boy they could not heal (Matthew 17:16). Paul, who healed others, was not healed of his own thorn (2 Corinthians 12:8-9). So I will hold both halves all the way through: Jesus really did send ordinary people to pray for the sick, and healing through that prayer is real — and He does not heal every body on this side of heaven, and His nearness in the suffering, when the body is not lifted, is not a lesser answer or a sign someone prayed wrong. Read the commission as an invitation to pray boldly for others. Never as a verdict you can pass on anyone’s faith.

What you came here for, in order

You may have come for the verse itself, or for the question of whether you are allowed to pray for someone’s healing, or for the actual words to say over a person you love. Jump to wherever you are tonight:

A word on the wording: every verse below is quoted exactly from the King James Version, the old devils and freely and whatsoever intact, because its unhurried cadence slows a nervous breath — and a slowed breath is the first kindness you can do a frightened, doorway-standing body before you pray for anyone. Where I trim with an ellipsis, it shortens for length and never bends the sense. One honest note on language, since this is a how-to and accuracy matters: the popular search phrase “heal the sick, cast out demons” is a fair condensing of Matthew 10:8, where the King James reads “Heal the sick… cast out devils” — devils and demons render the same underlying word, and modern translations say demons. I will name the exact wording each time so you are never praying a paraphrase thinking it is the literal text.

The verse, slowly: “freely ye have received, freely give”

Let us not rush the sentence that sent ordinary people out to pray for the sick. It is shorter than its weight suggests.

Matthew 10:8

“Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.”

Read who He is speaking to first, because that is the comfort. The twelve named just before this verse are not a spiritual elite — they are fishermen mending nets, a tax collector, a man who would later doubt the resurrection with his hand out for proof. These are the ones told heal the sick. If you have disqualified yourself from praying for someone’s body because you are too ordinary, too uncertain, too newly-faithed, look at the roster Jesus actually sent. It was not the impressive. It was the available.

Now read the four verbs, and notice they run from the everyday to the impossible: heal the sick (the common cold and the chronic ward), cleanse the lepers (the untouchable, the exiled), raise the dead (the flatly impossible), cast out devils (the oppressed and tormented). Jesus does not hand His followers only the manageable cases and keep the hard ones for Himself. The whole range is in the commission. But — and this is where so many go wrong — the verbs are not a boast about the disciples’ power. They are a description of what flows through people who have first received.

Which is the hinge of the whole verse: freely ye have received, freely give. Everything about healing-prayer that keeps it honest is hidden in those six words. You cannot give what you have not first received — which means the power is never yours, never earned, never a credit to your spiritual standing; it is a gift passing through open hands. And you give it freely — without price, without leverage, without making the sick person owe you faith or money or anything else for it. The moment healing-prayer becomes a transaction — pay enough, believe enough, perform enough, and the body must obey — it has stopped being the thing in this verse. Body practice: before you pray for anyone, hold both hands open in front of you, palms up, and say the six words slowly — freely I have received; freely I give. Let the open palms preach to you: you are not the source, only the channel; you are not charging, only passing on.

He did it twice, on purpose: the twelve and the seventy

If “heal the sick, cast out demons” had been said once, to twelve hand-picked men, you could file it as an apostles-only assignment and exempt yourself. So notice that Jesus did not say it once. He widened it.

Luke 9:1-2 — the twelve

“Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.”

Mark how the power is described: He gave it. “Gave them power and authority.” It did not well up from inside the disciples because they were holy enough; it was handed to them, deposited, lent. Healing was never their native ability. It was a delegated trust. Hold onto that — it will keep you both bold (you carry real authority) and humble (it was never yours to begin with).

Luke 10:1 — the seventy

“After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come.”

Now the circle widens past the famous twelve to seventy others — unnamed, ordinary, a crowd of nobodies-in-particular. And He sends them two and two, never alone, because healing-prayer was designed to be shared between people, not carried on one heroic set of shoulders. If you have felt you must do this by yourself, the Lord’s own arithmetic disagrees: two and two.

Luke 10:9 — what the seventy were told to do

“And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.”

The seventy get the same verb the twelve got — heal the sick — paired with the same announcement: the kingdom of God is come nigh. This is the key to what healing-prayer is actually for. It is not a power demonstration; it is a sign that points past itself — God’s nearness come nigh to a hurting body. The healing was never meant to be the headline. The nearness was. Body practice: name out loud the person you are praying for, and after their name say the seventy’s exact words over them — the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you — letting the prayer’s first work be to bring God’s nearness close to them, before you ask for anything to change.

Luke 10:17, 20 — what the seventy learned when they came back

“And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. …notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”

This is the verse that should be tattooed inside every would-be healer’s mind, because it is Jesus Himself correcting the very thrill we are most tempted by. The seventy come back high on it — even the devils are subject unto us! — and Jesus, gently, redirects the joy: rejoice not in your power over spirits, but rather rejoice that you belong to God. He pulls them back from spiritual triumphalism the moment it appears. The power is real — He does not deny it worked — but He will not let it become the thing they boast in. If the commission ever starts to feel like a stage for your faith, Jesus has already left the antidote in the same chapter. Body practice: after praying for someone, do not check whether you “felt” power; instead say one sentence of plain belonging — I am Yours, and so is the one I just prayed for — and let that, not any rush, be where the joy settles.

What “cast out demons” does and doesn’t mean here

This is the phrase that sends a chill down a careful reader’s spine, and rightly, because it has been badly handled by people who should have known better. So let me be plain and pastoral, and not melodramatic.

Matthew 10:1 — the power named

“And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.”

First, notice the Bible’s own pairing: Jesus gives authority “against unclean spirits… and to heal all manner of sickness and… disease” — spiritual oppression and physical illness named side by side, but not collapsed into each other. This is the careful line to hold. Scripture does present some affliction as spiritual oppression that Jesus and His followers confronted directly — that is in the text, and I will not pretend it away. But Scripture does not teach that all sickness is demonic, that every illness is a devil to be cast out, or that a diagnosis means a person is possessed or spiritually deficient. Jesus healed fevers and palsies and blindness as illness, with a touch and a word, distinct from the times He addressed an unclean spirit. Do not let anyone — least of all yourself, over someone you love — turn a medical condition into a spiritual accusation. That is precisely the weaponising this whole page is written to guard against.

So what does cast out demons mean for you, the ordinary person in the doorway? It means the realm of darkness is real, that Jesus has authority over it, and that He extends that authority to His followers — not that you go hunting devils behind every symptom, and not that you are equipped or called to stage some dramatic confrontation over a sick friend. For the vast majority of us praying for the vast majority of the sick, the honest and faithful posture is the simple one: you pray in Jesus’ name for God’s nearness and healing, you resist evil where it plainly is, and you leave the rest — including anything that genuinely needs discernment beyond you — to wiser, gentler hands and to God Himself. The commission is an invitation to bold prayer, not a license for fear-driven theatrics over a hospital bed.

One honest flag on language, because accuracy is a kindness here: phrases that float around online like “rebuke the demon of sickness” or “command the spirit of infirmity to leave” are not quotations of Matthew 10:8. They are later framings, and some of them carry exactly the triumphalism Jesus warned the seventy against. The literal text is gentler and humbler than the slogans built on it. When in doubt, pray the actual verse — heal the sick… freely ye have received, freely give — and let the slogans go.

The authority is real — and it is borrowed

Here is the balance the whole commission asks you to keep, and it is a hard one to keep upright, because we tend to fall off one side or the other. Either we shrink — who am I to pray for anyone’s healing? — and never open our mouths. Or we swell — I have the authority, the sickness must obey — and turn a gift into a club. The verses hold both edges at once.

Acts 3:6 — the authority is real, and it works through ordinary hands

“Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.”

Peter — a fisherman, a denier, an ordinary man — heals a lame man at the temple gate after Jesus has ascended. The commission did not retire with the Gospels; it walked on into the church, through unimpressive people. So when you wonder whether you may pray for someone’s body, the answer the book of Acts gives is a plain yes: such as I have give I thee. You give what you have received. That is allowed. That is the commission, still running.

Acts 3:16 — and the authority is borrowed, every bit of it

“And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong… yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.”

But read how carefully Peter refuses the credit. His name — Jesus’ name — hath made this man strong. Not Peter’s holiness, not Peter’s technique, not the impressiveness of Peter’s faith. The very next breath after the miracle, Peter is at pains to say it was not him. This is the safeguard built into the gift: the authority to heal is delegated, exercised in His name, which means it can never become a measure of your spiritual standing or a lever you control. You pray with real boldness because the power is His, and with real humility because the power is His. Both at once. Body practice: as you pray for someone, picture yourself not as the one with the power but as the one passing a message — hands open, leaning your whole weight onto the Name, praying not in my strength, but in Yours. The boldness and the humility live in the same posture.

James 5:14-15 — the commission, made ordinary and shared

“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up…”

This shared anchor verse turns up across this cluster, and here is what it adds that is distinct to the commission: it shows the sending-out of the twelve and seventy settling, eventually, into the ordinary practice of the local church. Not freelance healers wandering the land — the elders, plural, praying over the sick in the name of the Lord. The commission was never meant to make spiritual celebrities. It was meant to become the unremarkable, shared, name-of-the-Lord prayer of ordinary believers for one another. Notice too that it sends the sick toward the community — call for the elders — not into the isolation of trying to muster a private cure. Body practice: if you are about to pray for someone alone, ask first whether there is a second person — two and two — who could pray with you, and make the prayer shared, in the name of the Lord, the way the commission always intended.

The day the disciples could not

I cannot teach you the commission honestly without showing you the verse that keeps it from curdling into a formula — because Jesus put it right there in the Gospels, and people who only quote Matthew 10:8 tend to skip it.

Matthew 17:16, 20 — the commissioned disciples who failed

“And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. …because of your unbelief…”

The very disciples Jesus had given “power… to heal all manner of sickness” came to a tormented boy and could not cure him. Read that slowly, because it does something important to the formula. The same men with the same commission, on a different day, with a different sufferer — could not. Healing through the commissioned was real, and it was also not automatic, not guaranteed, not a switch the disciples could throw at will. If the men Jesus personally trained and empowered had a day they could not, then so will you, and it is not proof that you, or the sick person, did something wrong.

Now — I have to handle Jesus’ explanation with care, because “because of your unbelief” has been used as a bludgeon for two thousand years, and that is a misuse. Jesus says it to the disciples about their own praying, as a call to deeper dependence and prayer (verse 21 speaks of prayer and fasting) — never as something to say to or about the sick person. He does not turn to the suffering boy and blame his faith. He addresses His own followers’ need to lean harder on God, not less. So take the verse the way He meant it: as a summons to humble, dependent, persistent prayer for yourself the pray-er — and never, ever, as a verdict to lay on the one who is ill. The moment “they could not cure him because of unbelief” becomes “you aren’t healed because your faith is too small,” you have inverted the gospel and added cruelty to sickness. Jesus pointed the finger at the praying disciples’ dependence, not at the patient. Keep it pointed where He pointed it.

How to pray for someone else’s healing: a step-by-step

Here is the how-to the whole page has been walking toward — for the ordinary you, in the doorway, asked to pray for someone’s body and unsure how. Each step is small. You may stop after any one and still have prayed something true. This is built for the one praying for another, which is the distinct work of the commission.

  1. Receive before you give. “Freely ye have received, freely give.” Before you open your mouth, hold your hands open, palms up, and take one slow breath remembering you are not the source — only a channel for something handed to you. You are not summoning power; you are passing on a gift. This single move keeps the whole prayer humble.
  2. Make the out-breath longer than the in-breath. You are likely nervous — praying aloud for someone else is exposing. Let two or three exhales run longer than your inhales. A settled body prays a steadier prayer than a braced one, and your calm is itself a gift to the frightened person in front of you.
  3. Bring God’s nearness close first — before you ask for change. Say the seventy’s words over them: the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you (Luke 10:9). Begin by ushering God’s presence to their bedside, naming them, so the first thing your prayer does is bring Him near — not lay a demand on their body.
  4. Pray boldly, in His name, leaning your whole weight on Him. Then ask plainly for healing — in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 3:6) — with real confidence, because the authority is genuine. But lean the boldness onto the Name, not onto the size of your own faith (Acts 3:16). Bold because it is His power; humble because it is His power.
  5. Surrender the outcome honestly, in the same breath. Pray both halves the way Jesus’ own commissioned followers had to learn: Lord, You sent us to heal the sick — heal this body. And where, in Your wisdom, You do not lift it in this life, do not let go of them inside it. The surrender is not a failure of faith. It is the floor the bold prayer stands on, and it is the thing that keeps you from later blaming them or yourself.
  6. Refuse to weaponise the gift — over them or yourself. Whatever the outcome, do not say or imply that more faith would have fixed it — not to them, not to yourself. Even the commissioned disciples could not, one day (Matthew 17:16), and Jesus pointed the lesson at the pray-ers’ dependence, never at the patient. Hold the gift with open hands; never turn it into a measure of anyone’s worth.
  7. Then help them to real care, and pray two-and-two where you can. The commission and the doctor are not rivals — Luke was both an evangelist and a physician. Help them keep the appointment, take the medicine, ring the helpline. And where you can, do not pray alone: two and two (Luke 10:1) was always the design. Carry this with others.

A note on the science

When you are about to pray aloud for someone you love who is sick — or sitting beside a hospital bed feeling the weight of their suffering — the sympathetic nervous system, the “fight-or-flight” branch, tends to switch on in you, the carer: the jaw tightens, the shoulders climb, and the breath shortens into a shallow, rapid pattern that keeps your own internal alarm ringing. There is a measurable physiological reason that opening the hands, softening the shoulders, and lengthening the out-breath eases this. Extending the exhale relative to the inhale stimulates the vagus nerve and shifts the body toward the parasympathetic, “rest-and-restore” state; the heart rate settles on the out-breath, and unclenching the hands feeds the same calming signal back the other way. There is a second, quieter benefit worth naming: a calmer carer is a steadier presence, and a frightened person near a settled body often borrows some of that settling — co-regulation is a real and gentle thing. Let me be exact about the limits. This calms a nervous system — yours, and by presence perhaps theirs. It does not cure a disease, cast out anything, or heal an illness, and nothing in this paragraph should be read as a claim that a breath, a posture, or a prayer treats sickness. Keep the doctors, the medicine, and the appointments. What the slow exhale does is quiet your alarm enough that you can be truly present to the person and to the prayer, instead of being drowned out by your own fear. The breath settles the body; the prayer reaches past it.

—The body-science here reflects established neuroscience of the nervous system. What the science actually says about a settled body → · the research behind these pages

When you have prayed for them, and they were not healed

I cannot end on the seventy returning with joy without sitting, honestly, with the reader who prayed in real faith for someone they love — and the body did not get up. Because you exist, and you may be reading this with the prayer still unanswered, and you deserve the truth more than a tidy ending.

The disciples were sent to heal, and many were healed; that is real, and it is meant to make you bold to pray. But the same Bible that records the commission also records, without softening it, the day those same commissioned disciples could not cure a boy (Matthew 17:16); Paul, through whom God worked healings, left with his own thorn unremoved after asking three times (2 Corinthians 12:8-9); Timothy and his “often infirmities” (1 Timothy 5:23); Trophimus, left sick at Miletus by the very apostle through whom others were healed (2 Timothy 4:20). The commission is not a guarantee that every body you pray over walks out healed this week. It is an authorisation to pray boldly and freely for the sick — and the outcome remains in God’s hands, as it always was, even in the hands of the twelve.

So if you prayed faithfully and they were not healed, hear this with no shame attached: their unhealed body is not a soul unloved, and it is not a verdict on the size of your faith or theirs. Remember exactly where Jesus pointed the lesson when His disciples could not — at the pray-ers’ own deepening dependence on God, never at the patient’s worthiness. Do not pick up the bludgeon He refused to use. And remember what the seventy were really sent to deliver: not first a cure, but a nearness — the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. When the healing of the body does not come, the nearness still does, and that nearness is not a runner-up prize. In the Gospel it was always the point the healing was meant to signpost.

Keep praying boldly — you were sent to. Keep surrendering honestly — Jesus’ own disciples had to. Keep pointing the ones you love toward their doctors. And let God’s nearness, come nigh to the sick whether or not the body lifts, be a real answer and not a consolation.

Take the commission with you

You will not remember which verse sat in which Gospel by the time you are standing in the doorway, asked to pray, with your hands going dry. So I made you something small to keep within reach.

Freely Ye Have Received is a free one-page printable: the commissioning verses — Matthew 10:8, Luke 9:1-2, Luke 10:9, 17 and 20 — gathered on a single sheet, with a small, quiet place to write the name of the person you are praying for and the plain words to pray over them. Fold it into a Bible, a coat pocket, a hospital bag. It is for the moment you need to read that you were sent, and allowed, and given the words — rather than try to feel it.

→ Get the free printable, Freely Ye Have Received — no cost, yours to keep.

And if you want a place to walk this season of praying-for-someone one quiet page at a time — to write the verse that steadied you, the name you carried, the bold prayer and the honest surrender side by side, the small mercies and the dates — our Stilling Waves devotional journal for seasons of healing was made for exactly the doorway you are standing in. It teaches you to ask boldly and surrender gently, and it does not rush you. It sits with you while you intercede.

→ See the Stilling Waves journal

Where to go from here

If walking through the commission steadied your shaking hands a little, here are the nearest rooms in the house:

FAQ

What Bible verse says “heal the sick, cast out demons”?
The phrase comes from Matthew 10:8, where Jesus sends out the twelve: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.” The King James Version says “cast out devils”; devils and demons render the same underlying word, which is why modern translations and online searches say demons. Jesus also gave them “power against unclean spirits, and to heal all manner of sickness” (Matthew 10:1), and later sent seventy more on the same errand (Luke 10:9). None of this is a formula that guarantees a cure — keep your doctors — but it does mean Jesus genuinely sent ordinary followers to pray for the sick.

Does Jesus give ordinary Christians authority to heal the sick today?
Scripture frames the commission as something handed on, not closed. Jesus sent not only the twelve but seventy ordinary others (Luke 10:1); after His ascension, Peter — a fisherman — healed in His name (Acts 3:6); and James gives the whole church a standing instruction to pray over the sick (James 5:14-15). So yes, ordinary believers are invited to pray for the sick. But the authority is delegated — it works in His name, not by your own holiness (Acts 3:16) — and it is not a guarantee of every outcome. Even the disciples Jesus trained once could not heal a boy (Matthew 17:16). Pray boldly; hold it humbly.

Does “cast out demons” mean all sickness is caused by demons?
No, and this is important. Matthew 10:1 names authority over “unclean spirits” and the healing of “sickness and… disease” side by side but as distinct things — Scripture does not collapse all illness into the demonic. Jesus healed fevers, palsies, and blindness as illness, separately from the times He addressed an unclean spirit. The Bible never teaches that a diagnosis means a person is possessed or spiritually deficient, and treating it that way adds cruelty to sickness. Pray for healing in Jesus’ name, resist evil where it plainly is, get real medical care, and do not turn a medical condition into a spiritual accusation against anyone.

How do I pray for someone else’s healing without it feeling presumptuous?
Start by receiving before you give — “freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8) — remembering you are a channel, not a source. Bring God’s nearness close first by praying “the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you” (Luke 10:9) over them. Then ask boldly in the name of Jesus (Acts 3:6), leaning the boldness on His name rather than on the size of your faith (Acts 3:16). Surrender the outcome honestly in the same breath. And help them toward real medical care — the commission and the doctor were never rivals. Where you can, pray two and two (Luke 10:1) rather than alone.

What if I prayed for someone and they weren’t healed — did I fail, or did they?
Neither, and there is no shame here. The very disciples Jesus commissioned once could not heal a boy (Matthew 17:16), and Jesus pointed that lesson at the pray-ers’ need for deeper dependence on God — never at the sick person’s faith. Paul healed others yet kept his own unremoved thorn (2 Corinthians 12:8-9); Trophimus was left sick at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20). An unhealed body is not an unloved soul, and it is not a verdict on anyone’s faith. Keep praying boldly, keep surrendering honestly, keep their doctors close — and remember the seventy were sent to deliver God’s nearness first of all, which still comes even when the body does not lift.

This article is a reflection on Scripture and prayer. It is not medical advice and does not diagnose, treat, or cure any condition. If you or someone you are praying for is unwell, please see a qualified medical professional and continue any treatment they have given.