Place for Religion in Hospitals Research Paper

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Healing Hospitals

The United States is teeming with many people that are religious and/or spiritual in nature. In addition to that, many hospitals are owned and/or operated by religion-oriented groups with Jewish and Catholic hospitals being two of the more prevalent examples. These two facts in conjunction are very inter-related because many people associate healing with religion and many hospitals are beginning to actively embrace that in their operations and procedures. To be sure, not all people are religious and religious wishes and preferences, whatever they are, should be honored by a hospital caregiver irrespective of whether the beliefs of the hospital are different from the patient. However, for those where faith and healing working together are a mutual goal of the patient and the medical staff, scholarly research shows it can be embraced, if for no other reason that it keeps everyone positive and upbeat despite medical challenges. While there are obvious limitations to when and how religious practices should interweave with medical care, they should not be shied away from if there is any emotional or spiritual benefit to employing them while administering care.

Analysis

The components of a healing hospital are actually not all that complicated. As advanced by Ashcraft, Anthony and Mancuso (2010), hospitals are starting to embrace the dual-front care strategy of healing and spirituality as a way to keep spirits high and help the patient. Indeed, they state that if having a spiritual environment for a patient helps them in any way, they are all for instilling and including that into the care provided. Indeed, the Joint Commission Standards and Elements of Performance note that one's spiritual outlook absolutely affects and guides a person's views towards their care strategy and overall outlook. Rather than ignoring that or resisting it, it is seen by many as a natural progression to embrace that fact and craft a counseling and advice strategy on that being the case. Rather than allowing healthcare programs to just boil down to the "nuts and bolts" of the care and nothing else, a healing hospital (or other medical environment like a mental health center) should absolutely try to help heal and help the whole person rather than just focusing on the disorder.

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An obvious reason for this is that a person that faces medical struggles with optimism and faith will almost always do better overall than someone that does not and hospitals and other medical professionals should integrate into the care rather than ignore it. A key part of making that work is distinctly and specifically asking the patient what their medical preferences are. If they do not, they could foist religious views on someone that believes something else entirely. For example, while Jews and similar to Catholics in some respects and Baptists have some similarities to Muslims, there are also major differences and stepping on the proverbial toes of people in that way is exceedingly unwise (Ashcraft, Anthony & Mancuso, 2010).

To prevent hurt feelings and religion-related problems, it is best to just pause and sit down with the patient and find out what their feelings are, their fears are and how the medical staff can best soothe them. Sure, there are some general tactics that can assist just about anyone. However, everyone is different in one way or another and this is even true of dealing with people of the same religion or sect. Whatever can be done to assure people that religion will be used only to help, but not certainly not hurt, a patients feelings (let alone their health) should be the natural order of things in a healing hospital. The most important thing at that point is the person's care and absolutely nothing should supersede that as doing so is a violation of both medical ethics as well as the ethics of a Christian (as well as that of most other people, most religious and non-religious). One very important question to ask is to fetter out how a patient personally views their religion and spirituality. Some….....

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