Research Paper on Muslim Culture and Healthcare

Introduction

Culture has multiple definitions, but in nursing, it refers to the overriding beliefs, values, myths, learned responses, assumptions and the tolerated behaviors that unite nurses within their serving environment. Nursing culture elements emerge over time through personal experiences, literature, national culture, events among other factors that influence behavior and response of the nurses. When culture is embedded within the operations of a nursing group, it creates a specific behavior unique to their environment, and it is difficult to change. Muslims have a unique culture, and the ability of the nurses to be competent of the Islamic cultural paradigm can significantly affect healthcare delivery and perception of care. Muslims culture involves the tenets and awareness of the Islamic faith and beliefs, and it is essential for the nurses to understand the different implications of the spiritual and cultural beliefs held by Muslims in the clinical practice to promote cultural competence which improves care (Attum & Shamoon, 2018). This paper will assess the Muslim culture and how it affects healthcare especially nurses behavior and perception of their Muslim patients.

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Background

Care delivery to Muslim patients requires a degree of understanding of the cultural and spiritual values that are important to them. Nurses should be able to identify the difference between their culture and the Islamic culture to be able to deliver cultural competent healthcare services. The Muslim cultural aspects that can affect care includes the diet, privacy, modesty perspectives, touch restriction and other religious values that are inherent. Muslim faith surpasses a single ethnic group which contributes to the complexity of the Muslim culture. The several racial interactions and the spiritual values result in diverse views regarding illness and healthcare aspects of providing care. As such, the Muslims have unique perceptions towards care in addition to their Islamic faith values which make it a complex cultural aspect. Cultural competence care is essential in such cases to ensure that care is provided in an approach that respects the patient cultural background even by the care providers who are not Muslims (Rassool, 2015).

Article Search Process

The article search process plays a significant role in the quality of a literature review. It is essential to use criteria that ensure that the literature review topic is addressed and also promotes high reliable data that has integrity in the field of discussion.

Process

Identification of search objectives aims and purpose of research.

The objectives of this search are to identify reputable sources on Muslim culture impact on healthcare and how nurses use cultural competence to meet the cultural needs of Muslim patients. The research should be not more than ten years old to increase relevancy to the current healthcare environment.

Identification of relevant databases.

These literature review sources were searched in Google Scholar and Cochrane databases due to the high reputation regarding scholarly attributes of literature.

Identification of search keywords.

Nursing culture and Muslim care, Muslim cultural values and practices, and Cultural Competence.

Carrying out the actual search.

The keywords were used in the database to search for articles.

Documentation of the most relevant literature.

The articles were documented depending on relevancy to the research topic.

Dissemination of Articles

Rassool, G. H. (2015). Cultural competence in nursing Muslim patients.

Rassool (2015) has carried out a double-blind peer-reviewed article on how cultural competence can be applied in nursing Muslim patients to improve care quality. The author uses literature review to create a qualitative research article which establishes important themes on cultural competence in providing care to Muslim patients. The author notes that most Muslim patients their primary point of contact are the nurses. The author indicates that great diversity exists amongst the Muslim communities which present significant challenges to the nurses to provide culturally competent care. The author notes that Islamic practices dominate the behaviors and lives of the Muslims, but there are acculturated western oriented Muslims who are less strict regarding Islamic practices. The common aspects of Islamic culture can be found in health beliefs, access and use of care, family relations, and individual decision making on care.

Muslims view health as a blessing from God and spiritual intervention is significant in illness. Illness is perceived as a trial from God and a sign of personal failures, and also death is viewed as part of the journey. The family is given a significant precedent, and traditional healing involving prophetic medicine which is based on the prophetic traditions is usually consulted. The author identified that during hospitalization Muslims require privacy and the same gender nurse is required to provide care, where a nurse of the same gender is not available a female or male staff member should accompany the nurse (Rassool, 2015). Medications should not contain any prohibited substances by religion. The healthcare significance of this study is that understanding the values and Islamic practices even non-Muslim nurses can be able to provide culturally competent care.

Attum, B., & Shamoon, Z. (2018). Cultural Competence in the Care of Muslim Patients and their Families.

Attum & Shamoon (2018) research is qualitative research that has used interview questions to collect data on Muslim culture with the aim of increasing nurse's competency in dealing with patients of the Islamic faith. The researcher carries out a qualitative analysis to create important themes about cultural competence in Muslim patients care and their families. The limitation of this research is that it did not use a statistical method to analyze the results which creates a room for inconsistency and poor reliability. However, the study identified important issues of consideration by nurses to be able to provide culturally sensitive care to Muslim patients.

The authors found out that nurses should be aware of the patient privacy needs, unacceptable medicine, and diet as well as touch issues. The communication process of the patient problem if it is a female patient and male nurses will be communicated through the husband or a male family representative. The authors point out that Muslim cultural beliefs and practices pose a significant threat in quality care because of the gender preferences and misconception on the causes of illness. Therefore, the awareness of the cultural and religious beliefs and values by the nurses will significantly improve medical care quality and perception by the Muslim patients. In the cases of chronic conditions such as diabetes where the patient is supposed to mind their diet content, it is important for the nurse to be culturally competent and warn the patient of the cultural delicacies that they should avoid (Attum & Shamoon, 2018). The clinical significance of this research is that caring for the Muslim patients requires the understanding of their specific culture and beliefs because cultural and spiritual aspects affect the Muslim patient's view of disease as well as the intervention used by the nurses.

Del Pino, F. J. P. (2017). Nurses and Muslim patients: two perspectives on Islamic culture in the hospital.

Del Pino (2017) study is qualitative research which seeks to contrast the Muslim and nurses perceptions on Muslim religious and cultural aspects impact on care in the hospitals. The data was collected through interviews, and a qualitative approach was used to analyze the resulting data using the grounded theory. Open coding was used to identify critical patterns in the data, and axial coding was used to ensure the categories that emerged represented the research situation. The research is based on primary data and created highly reliable deductions on the impact of Muslim culture on care perceptions by both Muslim patients and the nurses.

The research concluded that nurses are profoundly unaware of Islamic cultural values and practices and also preconceptions based on the nurse's stereotypes, prejudice and culture create a negative perception of the nurses of Muslim patients. Most nurses are aware of the cultural differences but fail to generate cultural competent interventions to overcome the cultural differences. The research found a high level of preconceptions based on stereotypes which did not represent the actual cultural aspects of Muslim patients (Del Pino, 2017). The significance of this study on healthcare is that there is a significant need for research and nurse learning to ensure that they are culturally competent which will end the use of inappropriate preconceptions from stereotypical views.

Arousell, J., & Carlbom, A. (2016). Culture and religious beliefs in relation to reproductive health.

Arousell & Carlbom (2016) research is a literature review paper from empirical research which seeks to identify the cultural and religious aspects of reproductive health amongst Muslims. The source of data used in the study is a systematic review. The research was necessitated by the growing religious and cultural diversity in healthcare to assess how it affects the sexual and reproductive healthcare delivery. The paper provides an overview of the various implications that cultural and religious aspect has on reproductive healthcare disparities. The limitation of the study is the lack of empirical studies on the experience of Muslim patients experience in reproductive care which weakened the current evidential data on cultural competent reproductive health (Arousell & Carlbom, 2016). The research implication on healthcare is that there is need of further research and education of the nurses to provide culturally competent care due to the complexity and the degree of Islamic cultural values in sexual and reproductive health.

References

Arousell, J., & Carlbom, A. (2016). Culture and religious beliefs in relation to reproductive health. Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 32, 77-87.

Attum, B., & Shamoon, Z. (2018). Cultural Competence in the Care of Muslim Patients and their Families. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.

Del Pino, F. J. P. (2017). Nurses and Muslim patients: two perspectives on Islamic culture in the hospital. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 237, 1131-1137.

Rassool, G. H. (2015). Cultural competence in nursing Muslim patients. Nursing times, 111(14), 12-15.