Culture And Nursing: Understanding Muslim Cultures In Relation To Health

Cultural Skills in a Health Care Provider

Discuss about the Culture and Nursing.

In nursing care, there come the effects of culture conflicts during provision of health services. Although culture is important because it is already rooted in the society, the interests of the patient should be considered. In some cases, it is thought that culture competence is necessary when the health care competence is being sought. What needs to be done is that the nurses should culturally competent skills so that they can be able to offer health care services which are both clinically and culturally acceptable in a mutual way. In the end, a patient care plan is able to be created which seeks to address the health concerns of the patient. Although both competencies are of benefits in the provision of quality health care, they have different perspectives. The cultural beliefs aim at ensuring that equitable health care is provided to all people and hence focuses on the marginalized and disadvantaged people. The patient-centered care seeks to provide individual health care as well as personal relationships of the patient. This paper seeks to determine the cultural theories which present themselves when delivering healthcare services to the communities by evaluating published articles to indicate the completeness of reports based on this subject.

The interventions offered by the health service provider are therefore based on the context of the community that they are providing services to. Once the cultural belief and information related to the patient are obtained, the nurse is able to come up with a mutually acceptable treatment plan for each patient presenting with a given medical problem. The nurse, therefore, needs to be properly equipped with the proper frameworks and tools necessary for carrying out the cultural examination on a patient.

Padela et al., 2012, argues that for a medical practitioner to offer an acceptable medical care to Muslim patients, there is the need of having a clear knowledge of the manner in which the culture of these people relates to health care especially if there is a cultural conflict. Therefore, the author begins by stating that the minority communities are likely to receive an inferior health care service in the communities. Some modifications in the Islamic are investigated for adoption in the health care delivery. The community based participatory research was used to find out the feelings of the effects of Muslim culture on health care delivery. The participants of the study reported that in most instances, they were stigmatized by health care givers. This is as a result of a long time existence of a conserved manner of these people due to the boundaries that their religion and culture has created on them. It becomes very important therefore for a nurse to know the implications of offering a given medical care against the culture of the community that they are working in, while at the same time upholding a high level of clinical practice ethics. Among the major issues which bring some controversy when offering clinical care in a Muslim community is the issue of privacy, the diets that they take, modesty, the medications that they are subjected to and the manner in which the use of touch is done. The population of the Muslims is always growing with their worldwide distribution, which means that their medical needs are also on the rise. This would suggest that in normal clinical care, nurses get an encounter with Muslim patients more often than not. In this article, the community recommends that the health care givers need to accommodate some cultural issues such as gender sensitivities during health care.

Muslim Cultures in Relation to Health

According to Hweidi, & Al-Shannag, 2014, the nurses need to put in consideration the family needs of the patients during nursing care. The results from an interview in this article indicates that the most preferred patient needs were comfort, assurance and information while the least were support and proximity. The strict boundaries laid upon by the Muslim cultural beliefs, it can be a challenge for the nurses who are non-Muslims to offer a proper patient-centered care. Greater challenges arise especially if the medical facility is situated within the communities dominated by the Muslim culture. To deliver health care services which are sensitive based on the culture of Muslims, it is crucial that the nurse becomes familiar with the rights of passage of Muslims right from birth until death as well as the risks and prejudices surrounding their faith and the manner in which they practice their traditional health care services. The author recommends that nursing should be practiced by considering both family and culture centered principles so that the results can be impressing.

Padela & Curlin, 2013 argues that cultural and religious beliefs determine the manner in which the local people seek help for their illnesses. The Kleinman method of cultural framework was used to interpret the literature of American Muslims in relation to health. The Muslims believe that the best gift they can receive from God is a well-being that encompasses the social, physical, spiritual and mental states. Muslims believe that once they become sick, the should be patient enough as they pray and meditate on their health conditions. In fact, the Muslims who do not actually practice this religion seek religious interventions whenever they are faced with difficult situations. The general perception of sickness by Muslims is that it is a form of a test by God in an effort to give forgiveness for their sins, a sign of a reminder for them to improve their health, a spiritual gift or could be a sign that they have failed to follow the Islamic laws at some point. Therefore, to avoid these issues, the Islamists value a good health for themselves in religious terms and when death comes in, they view it as an opportunity to meet their God. These and other cultural beliefs bring some controversy when health care is being offered by nurses to Muslim patients. The author proposes a research agenda which will focus on issues relating to the minority religion in relation to health care.

Family and Culture Centered Care

Cheraghi et al., 2014 states that there are various beliefs and traditions which govern the manner in which the Muslims view their health situations. There are some other issues like privacy that the Islamic culture requires that they need to be met. When a Muslim patient is hospitalized, they need to be offered the highest level of privacy as well as modesty according to their cultural demands. In fact, it requires that the nurse serving in that particular ward should be of the same gender to the patient. In other words, if it is a female ward, the nurse should be female and if it is a male ward, the nurse should be a male. The issue of gender sensitivity also applies to the medical conditions related to gynecological as well as maternity health care services. In normal circumstances, this gender distribution of the nurses might not be as the patient may expect due to the varied staffing compositions of various health care centers.

In case there are no balanced nurses, a male nurse is only allowed to take care of a female Muslim patient only when accompanied by any other female member of staff or an adult relative of the patient being offered medical care. Another issue is the idea of the Muslim patient being reluctant to expose their bodies especially when clinical examinations are being carried out. In fact, a nurse should seek permission from the patient before they uncover any part of the body of the Muslim patient. If the permission is granted, the uncovering needs to be only up to the minimum part that was requested. The author advices that for an understanding on how Islamic culture impact health, it is important that the researcher’s inquiries capitalize on the disparities that exist between health care and Islamic culture.

According to Mujallad & Taylor 2016 modest is highly valued in the Islamic culture. Modesty encompasses the manner in which people of the opposite sex dress or interact including touch restrictions. When it comes to members of the opposite sex, they are not allowed to touch one another or even shake hands except only for the members of the family. This can pose a great challenge for the nurses but they actually need to adapt to this, touching a Muslim patient is only allowed when a nurse is performing a clinical examination on the patient of the opposite sex. However, the issue of touch is not a problem among the people of the same sex, say for instance the patient and the nurse. When it comes to the issue of eye contact, the Muslim patient should avoid a direct eye contact with the nurse of the opposite gender. This does not mean that the patient lacks trust to the nurse but it is treated as an act of being modest.

How do Muslims view Health Care?

Moreover, the issue of taking care of Muslim patients is a community affair as indicated by their cultural theories and hence Muslim visitors might not adhere to the rules such as time set aside for visiting their patients. The nurses hence need to take note of this crucial aspect when handling such an issue to prevent the need for compromising clinical health care for the patients. It therefore beats logic because at one point or the other there must be eye and physical contact between the nurse and the patient. As a result, the author advices that the cultural beliefs in nursing care should be observed such that modesty is strictly observed. But in most cases, the gender composition of the nurses in a health facility may not allow their beliefs to be met.

Mathew, 2014 argues that the Muslim cultures give high regards to the halal foods because these foods are considered to be clean and safe for consumption. Such beliefs have also been adopted by the non-Muslims since there are strict measures that are need to be met in processing such foods. These beliefs are likely to be extended even in the nursing care, demanding that the food should be halal for Muslim patients.

There are foods such as pork, fats from animals and alcohol which they are not allowed to eat. This earns that nurses might find a hard time especially when Muslim patients refuse to eat hospital food with claims that it is not halal. In this case, the nurses can either prepare halal food or provide fruits and vegetables to the patients. This can pose challenges especially to the non-Muslims people who cannot understand this culture. The Muslim patients may insist on fasting especially during Ramadan. This can provide problems to the nurse especially if they are dealing with diabetes patients whose blood sugar levels needs to be closely monitored. Fasting can be very dangerous especially to diabetes patients who are on insulin. It is important that the nurses give proper education of the patients on issues related to fasting and its effect on their medical conditions.

Conclusion

The health care provider serving a certain community should be able to understand the cultural beliefs of the respective community. This would enable them to carefully collect the information relating to the patient who has presented with some medical problems in a manner which is culturally acceptable. This means that it is crucial for the health care provider to be able to collect this information from a patient in a professional manner. This enables the specific needs of the patient, groups or communities to be me through a systematic way while considering the beliefs and cultural practices in an effort to provide a patient-centered care.

These are the articles used for analysis

References

Cheraghi, M. A., Manookian, A., & Nasrabadi, A. N. (2014). Human dignity in religion-embedded cross-cultural nursing. Nursing ethics, 21(8), 916-928.

Hweidi, I. M., & Al-Shannag, M. F. (2014). The Needs of Families in Critical Care Settings—Are Existing Findings Replicated in a Muslim Population: A Survey of Nurses’ Perception. European Journal of Scientific Research, 116, 518-528.

Mathew, V. N. (2014). Acceptance on Halal food among non-Muslim consumers. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 121, 262-271.

Mujallad, A., & Taylor, E. J. (2016). Modesty among Muslim women: implications for nursing care. MedSurg Nursing, 25(3), 169-173.

Padela, A. I., & Curlin, F. A. (2013). Religion and disparities: considering the influences of Islam on the health of American Muslims. Journal of religion and health, 52(4), 1333-1345.

Padela, A. I., Gunter, K., Killawi, A., & Heisler, M. (2012). Religious values and healthcare accommodations: voices from the American Muslim community. Journal of general internal medicine, 27(6), 708-715.