Religion and Ethical Decision Making in Multicultural Healthcare
Religion blurs many lines in human experience, making it impossible to categorize. Some numerous theories and viewpoints have contributed to our understanding of this complex phenomenon. Ethics is not a religion, even though many religions advocate for high ethical standards, even if they sometimes fail to address the issues that people face today, especially in healthcare.
Religion is a part of society that people turn to ensure their survival and well-being. Religion is one of the factors that affect the ethical considerations apart from culture, upbringing and an individual's beliefs and values. It shapes ethical considerations and hence impact ethical decisions that affect both the health care providers and the patients. This paper discusses the impacts of religion on ethical decision making in multicultural contexts in healthcare.
Impact of Religion on Healthcare
A report referred to as "Meeting Healthcare and the Needs of American Muslims" sought to gauge how faith impacts the cultural obstacles people who share the Muslim faith from various backgrounds face in the healthcare environment. One of the key areas of the study was the assignment of responsibility of God for health, disease, and healing.
From the findings of the study, most of the participants view illness through a religious lens and hence perceive it as predestined. It means that the healthcare providers' religion has an impact on the kind of ethical decision that they are able to make. According to some of the Muslims who took part in the study, illness is a disease of fate and to some, it is a failure to follow the tenets of the Imams. It, therefore, follows that for people holding such beliefs owing to their religious background are likely to have an impact on the kind of ethical decisions that they make. The circumstance may be worse, especially where the patient is from a different cultural and religious background.
Religion and Decision Making in Multicultural Healthcare
In healthcare, quantity may denote how long the patient lives or may be the number of people that the decision will affect. On the other hand, quality concerns how well one lives and this depends upon the quality of life. With these in a multicultural environment, one's religion has an impact on the decision they make with regards to therapy that will either prolong life and compromise quality and vice versa.
A healthcare provider taking care of a patient with terminal illness in a case where both are not from the same religious background, then there may be conflicts of perspectives to treatment. The ethical responsibility of the medical officer should be clear, but where the patient's family has a different perspective, then the medical officer may draw in religious beliefs in making the ethical decision.
Religious Beliefs and Ethical Decision Making
The fundamental belief of the Seventh Day Adventist church view of health is a reflection of theology and according to them, everything must be interpreted with reference to the bible. Adventists favor rational, scientific approaches to healthcare over the pseudoscientific ones and as such they would reject any disease therapy that is pseudoscientific.
Therefore, the Adventist healthcare providers will have their religion bear a great impact on the kind of ethical decisions that they make even in multicultural healthcare environment. For example, the Adventists believe that decisions on human life are best made in the context of healthy family relationships following medical advice. Therefore, when a patient is unable to give consent to a medical intervention then someone chosen by the patient should make the decision. Since this is a case example of an ethical decision, it shows how much the medical officer's religion will have an impact on the ethical decision that they make.
References
- AMN Healthcare Education Services Ethics and the Healthcare Professional. RN; Com 2012
- University of Chicago Medicine. Religious beliefs shape healthcare attitudes among U.S. Muslims. 2012 [Updated 12 August 2011; Cited 2017 March 24] Available from http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2011/20110812-muslim-health-attitudes.html
- DuBose r. Edwin. The Seventh-day Adventist Tradition: Religious Belief and Healthcare Decisions. The Park Ridge Centre; n.d
