Religion is a subject that we encounter daily, because we follow a specific faith and the rules established by it. Religion is not only “researchable,” but it is also of essential interest to clinicians, doctors, patients and health psychologists. Religion has the benefit of empowering the individual through connecting him/her to a community, and to a superior force, that might in turn give psychological stability (Basu-Zharku, 2011). This ability to empower could be used by health workers to help those who struggle with a disease or to promote a healthier lifestyle. This empowering happens through consciousness of religious principles, such as the sanctity of human life, shared identity, meaningful roles in the community and society at large, a variety of spiritual, social and economic support, social networks, and even leadership for social change and protection in time of conflicts. The field of health sociology at large should move towards promoting culture as a means of understanding between health care providers and patients and in the interest of prevention, as well.
Full Answer
Why is it important for healthcare professionals to accommodate religious beliefs?
· Religious-spiritual wellbeing is related to better health; 2. Religious-spiritual appreciation is a standard for hospital accreditation; 3. To undo religious-spiritual misunderstandings that can affect treatment; 4. Patients demand a religious-spiritual outlook from the institution; and 5. Costs may be reduced with religious-spiritual support.
What should I know about my patient's religious preferences?
· The diversity of religions around the world creates challenges for health care providers and systems to provide culturally competent medical care. Cultural competence is the ability of health providers and organizations to deliver health care services that meet the cultural, social, and religious needs of patients and their families. Culturally competent care can …
How do you provide culturally sensitive care to religiously observant patients?
· The most effective ways for nurses and healthcare workers to deal with religion and spirituality in the hospital in three steps: Communication , Support and Accommodation, and Tolerance. To learn more, check out this infographic created by Adventist University’s Online Masters in Health Administration program.
How can we empower healthcare providers to empower patients with religion?
· Religious-spiritual wellbeing is related to better health; 2. Religious-spiritual appreciation is a standard for hospital accreditation; 3. To undo religious-spiritual misunderstandings that can affect treatment; 4. Patients demand a religious-spiritual outlook from the institution; and 5. Costs may be reduced with religious-spiritual support.
What role does religious play in health care?
Honoring Religion in Healthcare Chaplains play a role in helping establish trust between patients and healthcare providers, since they provide spiritual care while doctors and nurses offer medical care.
How can religion affect healthcare treatment?
Religion and spirituality can impact decisions regarding diet, medicines based on animal products, modesty, and the preferred gender of their health providers. Some religions have strict prayer times that may interfere with medical treatment.
How does religion or spirituality play a role in a patient's health?
Some studies indicate that those who are spiritual tend to have a more positive outlook and a better quality of life. For example, patients with advanced cancer who found comfort from their religious and spiritual beliefs were more satisfied with their lives, were happier, and had less pain (11).
How does religion influence nursing care?
Nursing care must be consistent and congruent with these beliefs and practices or dissonance and distress can occur. Conflicts with one's religious beliefs and treatment plans can lead to spiritual or religious distress as well as the refusal of treatments and nonadherence to the plan of care.
Does religion improve health?
Research has repeatedly shown that people of faith report feeling better and healthier. One of the most striking findings in social epidemiology, Luhrmann notes, is that religious involvement with God is better for your body in terms of immune functions and reducing loneliness.
Why it is important for healthcare systems to include the cultural and spiritual needs of the patient?
Many patient's anxieties are reduced when they turn to their faith during healthcare challenges. Because many patients turn to their beliefs when difficult healthcare decisions are made, it is vital for healthcare professionals to recognize and accommodate the patient's religious and spiritual needs.
How does religion affect the healthcare seeking behavior of individuals?
Religious beliefs cause patients to forego needed medical care, refuse life-saving procedures, and stop necessary medication, choosing faith instead of medicine. Health Practitioners need to learn to respect the decisions that patients make based on their religious beliefs and not become offended or feel rejected.
How can leaders best promote spirituality in the workplace?
How can leaders best promote spirituality in the workplace? By demonstrating commitment to the organization in their own attitudes and behaviors.
How does spiritual beliefs affect healthcare?
Some research shows a connection between your beliefs and your sense of well being. Positive beliefs, comfort, and strength gained from religion, meditation, and prayer can contribute to well being. It may even promote healing. Improving your spiritual health may not cure an illness, but it may help you feel better.
How did religion help the development of medicine?
Religious beliefs have influenced the development of medicine in a number of ways. The Ancient Egyptians religious beliefs led them to develop their understanding of the location of the main organs in the body. They learnt this through their use of mummification.
How do cultural beliefs and practices affect health care?
The influence of culture on health is vast. It affects perceptions of health, illness and death, beliefs about causes of disease, approaches to health promotion, how illness and pain are experienced and expressed, where patients seek help, and the types of treatment patients prefer.
What is the relationship between religion and medicine?
Working through medicine is a noble duty towards Divinity. Besides prayer, medicine is one way to strengthen our faith. Life shows that people with a religious practice, and a healthy lifestyle, show a lower risk of developing diseases. Human health, we can say, is the result of a religious practice.
Why are healthcare providers developing strategies and techniques to respond to the religious and spiritual needs of patients and families?
Health systems and healthcare providers are developing strategies and techniques to respond to the religious and spiritual needs of patients and families for a number of reasons . One reason is that, in addition to TJC, state and federal guidelines encourage institutional responsiveness to population diversity.
Why is it important to include cultural and spiritual needs in healthcare?
It is important for healthcare to include the cultural and spiritual needs of the patient. Healthcare professionals should be empowered with the knowledge and skills to respond to the needs of patients and their families at an intensely stressful time.
How can culturally competent care improve patient quality and care outcomes?
Strategies to move health professionals and systems towards these goals include providing cultural competence training and developing policies and procedures that decrease barriers to providing culturally competent patient care .
What is culturally competent health care?
The goal of providing culturally competent health care services is to provide consistent quality of care to every patient, regardless of their cultural, ethnic, racial, or religious background. Strategies for improving cultural competence in individuals and systems include:
How can culturally competent care be improved?
Culturally competent care can improve patient quality and care outcomes. Strategies to move health professionals and systems towards these goals include providing cultural competence training and developing policies and procedures that decrease barriers to providing culturally competent patient care. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Why should providers and systems be culturally and spiritually sensitive?
Why should providers and systems be culturally and spiritually sensitive? The Joint Commission (TJC) requires hospitals to be accountable for maintaining patient rights, including accommodation for cultural , religious, and spiritual values. Healthcare professionals and systems must care for patients as whole persons; this includes the body, mind, and spirit.
What happens if health care providers don't work together?
If providers and health care systems are not working together to provide culturally competent care, patients may have untoward health consequences, receive poor quality care, and be dissatisfied with the care they receive. The quality of patient-health professional interactions is decreased.
How to deal with religion in the hospital?
The most effective ways for nurses and healthcare workers to deal with religion and spirituality in the hospital in three steps: Communication , Support and Accommodation, and Tolerance.
Why should religious and spirituality be included in medical care?
In times of illness and injury, many people turn to religion and spirituality for comfort and healing. So it makes sense that these parts of a person’s life should be incorporated into their care. The good news is that there’s growing support in the medical community to address religious and spiritual issues in patient care. In fact, organizations like the American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Family Physicians and American Nursing Association have stressed the need for greater understanding of a patient’s belief systems, particularly when dealing with treatment options and end-of-life issues.
What organizations emphasize the importance of belief systems?
In fact, organizations like the American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Family Physicians and American Nursing Association have stressed the need for greater understanding of a patient’s belief systems, particularly when dealing with treatment options and end-of-life issues.
What is the institutional commitment to support the client's religious/spiritual needs?
Institution must inform patients at hospital admission about their rights and the resources available there. This statement may be a clear paragraph in the institutional brochure provided to the patient on admission. A large numbers of patients report a wide spectrum of spiritual needs, such as help with specific religious/spiritual rituals. A basic infrastructure to support these needs include [ 15 ]: a private space for contemplation and reflection (many times the hospital chapel); diversified medias (sacred books, inspiring DVDs, etc.); some ritualistic equipment (including adaptations such as electronic candles). Support groups, either religion-based or not, are useful for individual, family or small groups interventions.
What is spirituality in hospital?
The hospital should provide religious/spiritual resources in order to promote the most effective coping strategy to their patients, considering either recovery or possible death [ 1 ]. Spirituality may be defined as the search for ultimate meaning, purpose and significance, in relation to oneself, family, others, community, nature and “sacred”, expressed through beliefs, values, traditions and practices [ 2 ]. Many people express their spirituality trough their formal religions or their traditional faiths. Others still strengthen their spiritual dimension with non-religious elements. Although religiosity and spirituality are distinct constructs, the overlap between them is remarkable and consistent. Thus, the term religiosity/spirituality (R/S) is often adopted to refer to transcendent elements of meaning, purpose and connectedness. A contemporary orientation of the hospital experience model, therefore, must encompass the spiritual dimension.
What is spirituality?
Spirituality may be defined as the search for ultimate meaning, purpose and significance, in relation to oneself, family, others, community, nature and “sacred”, expressed through beliefs, values, traditions and practices [ 2 ].
How does faith affect healthcare?
Not all patients fully understand the beliefs of their own denominations about particular ethical issues, and so pastoral care staff or the patient’s own clergy can sometimes be of enormous help in clarifying for patients what their own traditions hold to be true [ 6 ]. The presence of the clergyman may be especially important when the patient has one religious affiliation and the relatives have another, as it happens frequently in the current multicultural societies. An intermediation is also welcome when the religious perspectives from healthcare professionals affect clinical decisions, especially on sensitive issues such as termination of pregnancy or treatment suspension in terminal illnesses.
Why is deep institutional involvement important?
Deep institutional involvement. An important action is to link the religious/spiritual support program to a major humanistic project of the institution, in order to guarantee the resources for its continuation, among many other financial priorities.
What is pastoral intervention?
A whole set of pastoral interventions includes [ 16 ]: assessment (welfare, needs and resources of the patient); ministry (relationship, conversation and company support); counseling (ethics consultation and education); and ritual (support on religious practices, such as the Eucharist or other sacraments). Many conflicts with hospital routine may surge in such sequency, such as lack of privacy, procedure disturbance, lack of time and inadequate moments for visiting. Sometimes, hospital rules such as visiting hours or number of visitors must be relaxed. Little concessions must be done for the patient whenever possible, from the preference to be attended by a professional of the same gender, until to consult a religious/spiritual leader before accepting a procedure. In order not to hurt sensibilities or be invasive, the ideal situation is to check with the patient, on admission, whether he/she want the religious/spiritual visit. If so, the patient name goes into a list that is provided to the clergyman, who then makes the religious visit only for them, avoiding an inopportune intrusion.
Why is R/S important?
The importance of R/S support is greater in communities where religion represents a social norm (i.e., it is common and socially desirable). The advancement of initiatives on spiritual support in hospitals depends also on the demand of the regional characteristics of populations.
Why does religion matter in healthcare?
Why Religion Matters in Healthcare. According to Cultural Religious Competence in Clinical Practice, “Religion and spirituality are important factors in a majority of the patients seeking care. Unfortunately, health providers may not take religious beliefs into account when they are dealing with difficult medical decisions for patients ...
Which religion does not condone the use of drugs, implants, skin grafts or medical dressings that
Hindus – “Vaishnavism, the major branch of the Hindu faith, considers the killing of animals, especially cows, to be sinful. Therefore, the religion does not condone the use of any drugs, implants, skin grafts or medical dressings that contain parts of pigs or bovines” (Lamotte, 2018).
What does the hospital leadership believe about altruistic behavior?
They argue that in both groups, the hospital leadership believes there are spiritual rewards resulting from altruistic behavior, which, in their industry, means maximizing patient benefits. However, there is a difference between the traditions in this behavior.
Do Catholic hospitals allow sterilization?
2) At least some US Catholic hospitals have prohibited elective sterilization for many years. When most doctors practiced independently from hospitals, they often ignored the hospital's protocols and cited best interest of *their* patient. With more doctors (including a majority of primary care physicians) now being employed directly by hospital systems, their latitude to make choices in opposition to their employers' policies is in serious question. In fact, I wonder what a health system's health insurance plan would do if payment were requested for a procedure prohibited at the hospital where it was performed?
Which religion does not condone the use of drugs, implants, skin grafts, or medical dressings
Vaishnavism, the major branch of the Hindu faith, considers the killing of animals, especially cows, to be sinful. Therefore, the religion does not condone the use of any drugs, implants, skin grafts or medical dressings that contain parts of pigs or bovines.
What do Christian scientists believe?
Christian Scientists. Christian Scientists believe that the primary method of healing should be through prayer, and many members have in the past been against modern medical treatments. There have been measles outbreaks among Christian Scientists, and studies have shown that mortality levels were high.
Why don't Amish people have heart transplants?
The Amish will not allow heart transplants and, in some cases, heart surgery because they view the heart as “the soul of the body.” Children who have not been baptized are exempt from that restriction.
Why don't Jehovah's Witnesses eat blood?
Just be firmly resolved not to eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life with the flesh. - Deuteronomy 12:23. That’s just one of several Old and New Testament scriptures used by Jehovah’s Witnesses to explain why their religion refuses to accept blood transfusions. cnn/alberto mier.
Do Amish people seek medical attention?
An Amish horse-drawn buggy. Though the religion does not forbid its members from seeking medical attention, many Amish are reluctant to do so unless absolutely necessary. They believe that God is the ultimate healer, and they are likely to turn to folk remedies, herbal teas and other more “natural” antidotes.
Do Seventh Day Adventists have medical issues?
In fact, Seventh-day Adventists have no issue with standard medical treatment but do emphasize a holistic approach to health, which they practice in their not-for-profit Adventist hospital system, with divisions around the world.
Can a Christian science nurse give physical therapy?
Christian Science nurses can provide physical assistance and a “healing atmosphere” to their patients but do not “diagnose, administer drugs, or provide any sort of physical therapy or other medical treatment.”
How does religion affect health?
There are four prominent pathways in which religion influence health: health behaviours (through prescribing a certain diet and/or discouraging the abuse of alcoholic beverages, smoking, etc., religion can protect and promote a healthy lifestyle), social support (people can experience social contact with co-religionists and have a web of social relations that can help and protect whenever the case), psychological states (religious people can experience a better mental health, more positive psychological states, more optimism and faith, which in turn can lead to a better physical state due to less stress) and ‘psi’ influences (supernatural laws that govern ‘energies’ not currently comprehended by science but possibly understandable at some point by science). Because spirituality/religion influences health through these pathways, they act in an indirect way on health (Oman & Thorensen, 2002).
What is the meaning of religion?
Religion, however, is communal, particular and defined by boundaries. It is spirituality incarnated at the social and cultural level. Religion takes the boundless and binds it into the limitations of language and culture, even as it may also transform culture. “Religion” derives from religio, “to bind back or to tie.” Like “spirituality,” the term “religion” has suffered from a multiplicity of definitions. The term “religion” is increasingly used by scholars in the narrow sense of institutionally based dogma, rituals and traditions (Testerman, 1997). Kenneth Pargament (1997), defines religion broadly as “the search for significance in ways related to the sacred,” encompassing both the personal and social, traditional and non-traditional forms of the religious search. Pargament uses the term, “spirituality” to describe what he calls the central function of religion that is, the search for the sacred.
Why should patients be culturally sensitive?
Because many patients aren't observant or are agnostic or atheist, be cultural ly sensitive about broaching the subject of religion in depth. All patients, whether observant, not observant, agnostic, or atheist, should receive culturally competent and compassionate care.
Why do nurses need a culturally diverse knowledge base?
As a nurse, you need a culturally diverse knowledge base so you can provide individualized, patient-centered care. Besides knowing your patients' cultural and religious beliefs, you need to understand the rationales supporting those beliefs because they can impact your patients' care plan.
What are the goals of cultural diversity?
The goals of widening your knowledge base about cultural and religious diversity are to reduce the incidence of poor patient outcomes, boost overall patient satisfaction, and improve care quality—all while using best practices. Reading this article can help you begin to reach these goals. Of course, this is just a start—although this article provides a brief overview of five of the world's major religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam) and other religions (such as Christian Science, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Church of Scientology, and Jehovah's Witnesses) that you might see, there are many other religious groups, as well as numerous sects within these groups and variations in belief within each sect. I encourage you to research religious practices specific to your patient population to optimize your patients' healthcare experience.
How often do Muslims wash their bodies?
Observant Muslims commonly wash before and after meals and before prayer, which takes place five times a day. You can assist Muslim patients in meeting their spiritual needs of scheduled prayer throughout the day by ensuring that procedures, treatments, or interruptions such as medication administration don't occur during those times if possible.
What do Buddhists do?
Buddhists emphasize mindfulness and peaceful meditation during sickness and times of crisis. Try to provide a quiet and tranquil setting for the patient and family when possible to facilitate meditation. Buddhist parents may seek the guidance of a Theravada Buddhist monk when naming and blessing their newborn child.
What do we ask patients during admission?
During the admission process, we typically ask patients if they have any cultural or religious preferences. Ideally, we use this information by incorporating it into the care plan when appropriate.
Why do Buddhists refuse analgesics?
Buddhist patients may refuse analgesics because clarity of the mind is very important to practicing Buddhists. Nonpharmacologic pain management interventions, such as meditation and relaxation techniques, are often preferred. Buddhists emphasize mindfulness and peaceful meditation during sickness and times of crisis.