Healthcare Providers and Religion Research Paper

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Spiritual care in the past was not considered to be a part of medicine. However, over time both holistic nursing and the health movement have become increasingly involved with the assessment of the patient's religious needs and care. In every day lives, a lot of patients who enter the hospital have strong spiritual beliefs and want to be treated in the same way. There are also cases that a doctor might not belong to the same religious belief as of the patient so it becomes more difficult for him/her to fulfill the spiritual needs of the patient. Questions arise regarding the role of the nurses in these cases and whether they can fulfill these needs of the ill person (Spiritual Care: The Nurse's Role, n.d.). Identifying this role of the nurses does not mean that the hospital is devaluing the pastor's or the minister's role in the community. It simply means that both the pastor and the nurses can work together to heal the patient in their own ways collectively. A nurse might not always feel comfortable in fulfilling spiritual role(s) for the patient, but it is their duty to be sensitive towards every patient's faith. With the role of spirituality increasing, the profession of nursing is required to increase the competence and awareness on the matter of faith and religion of the patient (Nelson, 1984, p.26).

Christianity and Buddhism: Common Components to Healing

Christianity is one of the world's largest religions and is divided into three divisions: Protestant faiths, Eastern Orthodox Religions, and Roman Catholicism. It is based on the worship of one God and promoting His kingdom through fulfilling the messages of Jesus from the Gospel. The nurse for the Christian ill person would have to be careful about the different religious rituals and beliefs that are linked with health-related incidents like childbearing, birth, death, and organ donation. Spiritual care according to Christian patients helped them to be aware of transcendence, a higher purpose and meaning (Conco, 1995). The nurses should also be aware of the different Western churches which include: Unitarian, Universalist Association of Churches, Jehovah's Witness, Church of Jesus and Latter Day Saints and Christian Science (Spiritual Care: The Nurse's Role, n.d.).

The practices and beliefs of Buddhism are derived from the teachings and life of Buddha who lived 2500 years ago in India. The traditions of myriad Buddhists are linked with the cultures of different geographical communities such as Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhists are mostly found in monasteries of nuns and monks who preserve the liturgies and teachings of the Buddhist. According to Buddhism, the suffering of a person can end by following the eightfold path: right mindfulness, right contemplation, right effort, right livelihood, right action, right speech, right intention and right understanding (Spiritual Care: The Nurse's Role, n.d.).

What is important to patients of the faiths when cared for by health care providers whose spiritual beliefs differ from their own?

An ill person hospitalized with any illness has a right to receive the treatment that is consistent with his/her spiritual faith. According to the patient, it is important that all the rituals of his faith are followed by the healthcare provider. For this the nurse should have complete training so that she can fulfill the needs of the patient. Every patient that comes in sick does not belong to the same faith. If a patient has strong religious beliefs, they expect the nurses and the healthcare providers to treat them according to their faith and religious rituals. The healthcare providers should have the basic knowledge about different religions so that it is easy for them to take care of the patient. It is not important that the nurse treat them with complete and/or specific rituals and practices, however, they must have an understanding of different faiths in order to assist them through proper medical care (Spiritual Care: The Nurse's Role, n.d.).

Worldview Questions

1. What is Prime Reality? (Shelly & Miller, 2009)

In Christianity, God has the Supreme Power and the Ultimate Reality. Christian theology states that every person has a divine nature and Ultimate Reality is explained by the relation and reality that is existing between the hypostases (Valea, 2015).

Buddha, the founder of Buddhism states that there is no existence of material or spiritual substance and there is no personal god. The Ultimate reality is that everything that exists is dependent on each other as each of them has their own functions to perform (Valea, 2015).

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2. What is the nature of the world around us?

The Bible provides all the information about God and the universe that He created. The worldview of Christianity states, for many but not all Christians, that the creationist model described in the scripture best fits the scientific facts of nature. Science and Christianity are more compatible in the declaration that everything in this world is created by God (Ephesians 3:9) (Christian Worldview, n.d.).

Buddhism on the other hand talks about perception and reality. According to Buddhism, the 'evidence of reality' that is given to us by our senses has faults in it and the perception of the world that the humans have is not a correct one. It also states that everything that exists has an impersonal and ultimate existence that is neither evil nor good. They are perceptions that are mistaken and have no meaning that can be counted as an absolute one (Terry, n.d.).

3. What is a human being?

The Bible states that humans are the 'highest of God's acts of creation' and are created in the 'image' of God. The image and likeness of God are explained in many debates carried on by different people. One debate states that a human has the ability to reason and think; a human has the ability to study the entire universe even if he is very small as compared to the universe. Humans can also make moral and ethical choices and reason with things in different ways. Apart from that, they also have creative abilities so a human is the image and likeness of God (Humans -- created in God's likeness, n.d.).

In Buddhism, a high priority is given to the inner change and transformation of a human. The religion states that the human actively personifies the Law power which gives rise to the web of interdependent and interconnected relationships (Matsuoka, 2005).

4. What happens to a person at death?

In the Bible, death is compared to sleep multiple times, meaning that the person is unconscious for a long time and does not know about the passing of time. The Bible states that the living people know that they will die sometime but the dead do not know anything (Ecclesiastes 9:5) (What does the Bible say about death? n.d.).

Buddhism states that when consciousness and heat ends, death occurs. The faith also states that death occurs when the karma of a person is exhausted, when the allotted lifespan of a person is exhausted, and when both the karma and lifespan are exhausted together, or when life ends in accidental ways. Death in Buddhism is just ending one chapter and then starting the next one (Sudhamma & Born, 2002).

5. Why is it possible to know anything at all?

In Christianity, a human can achieve thoughts that do not require any intellectual elements or assumptions. A human thinks around a framework that defines his reality. The base of this religion is the existence of One God and the humans from the beginning are firm on the knowledge that is provided to them by God through the revelations (Mohler, 2010).

In Buddhism, a person does not have to merely accept things because they were said by the Buddha, but he instead he can disagree with them if he does not find them to be reasonable. A human does not always need rationality to accept everything or blindly accept the teachings of the Buddha. Buddhism itself is the training of a mind and that can only happen if a person debates over what he learns and what is told to him (Bullen, 1994).

6. How do we know what is right and wrong?

Wrong in Christianity is not determined by the sensitivity of the acts of that person but it is still considered wrong even if that person is not aware of it (Jackson, Similarly, 'right' is not what a man is able to achieve due to his abilities and genius acts. Two people able to conceive a child out of marriage is not legitimate and not right even if they think it is (Jackson,

In Buddhism, evil and the good are illusions, and if a person does something that leads him to suffering, then the thought of it is wrong in itself and if he does not suffer then that thought is the right one (Terry, n.d.).

7. What is the meaning of human history?

The worldview of Christianity appeared in the human history for more than.....

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