Health Care Provider and Faith Diversity: First Draft

Abstract

Faith can simply be considered as confident belief in a certain truth, a value in addition to trustworthiness of an individual. Christianity is defined as a secure and strong belief in a supernatural being in addition to trusting acceptance to the supernatural being. To ensure effective and quality service delivery, there is the need for the healthcare providers irrespective of their diversity in culture and religion, to accommodate and further be high sensitive to their diverse patients’ needs to ensure that the patients receive high-quality service delivery and to facilitate healing specifically based on diverse spiritual perspective. The paper focuses on how religion has played a critical role in enhancing healing process within the healthcare environment.

Introduction

In the modern society healthcare facilities, there are numerous patients from various countries and ethnic background and religion. In addition to this, the healthcare providers are so diverse such that we have a combination of cultures within the health care facilities necessitating the need for a strategy that will ensure there is efficiency in service delivery, and patient care is done at a personal level. All these individuals are brought together under one roof working together irrespective of their diversity. Based on the medical dictionary definition, spiritual healing can be considered as the employment of spiritual practices including prayers to enhance the cure of a particular disease. Spirituality and faith, therefore, plays a significant role towards individual healing (Hardesty, 2003, p. 126). The patient’s spirituality greatly influences individual wellbeing in addition to their specific cultural values. Therefore, there is the need for the medical and healthcare practitioners to take into consideration the diversity in beliefs and culture among their patients to ensure that they are managed at an individual level.

The essay seeks to analyze the concept of health care provider and faith diversity by focusing on two major religions including Christianity and Buddhism.

Christianity

Studies have pointed out that Christian philosophy of faith in addition to their healing often refers to a supernatural being’s which in this case is God’s power to heal. The reality of Christianity is a high power where there is a God who is so powerful and the creator of heaven and earth. According to Christian faith, the universe was created God in addition to everything that is in it. According to Koss-Chioino, (2006, p. 82), the universe is well organized, and everything in it was created to achieve a particular end. Human beings were created by God’s hand and given life in the form of a spirit that lives within the human being. Therefore based on Christian faith, Human beings are created beings and were created specifically to take care of the God’s creation implying that man has a greater value in the world.

According to Christian faith, there is life after death and this belief has been held ever since the creation of mankind. It is important and possible to know everything in Christian faith to lead a life that will please God. Therefore, to understand the aspect of life, the universe, and concept of God, Christian uses a Holy Bible to search for the truth. According to Christianity, what they believe to be wrong is that particular thought or action that would separate them from God referred to as sin while on the other hand, that which will please God is believed to be right based on Bible scriptures.

Human history to Christian is traced from the Bible where the Bible gives the chronological of events from the time when the world was formless and devoid to what it is today. History is thus essential to understand what can separate Christians from God and that what is believed to be essential in strengthening the bond between man and God (Koss-Chioino, 2006, p. 83).

Buddhism

Buddhism can simply be considered to be in line more to being a philosophy rather than a religion where is tend to focus specifically on explaining the way of life of human being. According to Kumar (2003, p. 40), Buddhism revolves around two core concepts including leading a normal life, developing wisdom and individual understanding in addition to being mindful of actions. Buddha lived many years ago in the Northern part of India approximately 2600 years and throughout his life, Buddha used to teach his great followers for a period of more than 45 years on ways to live un-materialistic life in addition to effective ways to overcome human sufferings (Bercholz & Kohn, 1993).

The teaching advanced by Buddha focused specifically on do good, do no potential harm to another person and meditate. According to Rinpoche, (2012, p. 53), Buddhist believes in the power of Karma implying action positive, neutral or negative. These actions cannot be easily lost by the mind. The actions of an individual mind at any particular time leaves an imprint on that person’s mind. Negative actions within an individual, therefore, can develop illnesses while on the other hand; positive actions tend to enhance health and individual happiness. Focusing on the Buddhist spiritual healing and its general perspective tends to hold that an individual mind is the health and illness creator. The concept of mind further holds that the mind is non-physical, and further, it has the capability to know. Further, they believe that a particular type of illness is just like a cloud that tends to block them from the sun.

Spiritual Perspective on Healing

Presently, the belief in healing among Christians integrates the will of God, and this is made through their faith with various traditional medical practices. They believe that God had given the manpower and ability to obtain skills and knowledge to acquire specifically and employ diverse scientific advancement and technology to aid in the treatment of diseases. I believe therefore that in Christianity healing is made possible through having a strong faith in God and doing the will of God to avoid sin. The Bible that the “wage of sin is death” and it is through sin that human beings become ill (Romans 6:23 KJV).

In addition to this, studies have shown that some of the Buddhist uses healers referred to as lamas who are specifically used to bless the overall healing process and medicine. In other instances, lamas can blow on a specific part of an individual body with aim of affecting healing or even relieving pain. Further there are also specific ceremonies aimed at stopping any spiritual harm hence enabling that individual recovering process (Schumm & Stoltzfus, 2007, p 36). In order to heal a particular type of illness currently, I believe that Buddhist engages in various positive actions. For instance, to prevent a particular type of disease these individual in most instances often purify their mind by clearing all the negative imprints developed by karma that might be present.

Important to these believers when cared for by Healthcare providers

Christianity believes in one God who is the creator of heaven and earth and a very powerful being who possess the power to heal them of any type of illness. The God’s will is specifically interpreted by individuals as being punished for various sins that they could have committed or even to bring an individual closer to God and strengthen his or her faith in God. In most instances in order to get closer to God during prayers, Christians often do fasting. In other instances, they are visited by pastors at their homes where they held prayer meetings and praying for the sick.

Buddhist believe that illnesses are temporal hence, can be eliminated from an individual mind through removing various negative thoughts while at the same time replacing them with another thought believed to be positive. The Buddhist, therefore, practices a certain process aimed at treating illnesses through blessing of water and water which is often consumed by a patient. There are also other healing components practiced by Buddhist including, meditation, prayer recitation, and even visualization (Rinpoche, 2012, p. 56).

Conclusion

The essay has critically analyzed the concept of health care provider and faith diversity and its relevance in the current society by focusing on two major religions which in this case are Christianity and Buddhism. Faith and spiritually have been shown to have played a significant role to patients. It has been established that most of individual’s spirituality is difficult to comprehend and this has been the case because spirituality is part of human experience. The healing process of the patient is very essential and often it occurs where the health care practitioners tend specifically to their patients religious, physical and even spiritual needs.

I have learned the aspect and importance of faith within healthcare provision. Throughout the study, it is evident that religion plays a critical role in the treatment of various diseases through enhancing and speeding the healing process. The learning can be applied to healthcare provider where they can integrate religion in healthcare provision especially in a multicultural environment.

References

Bercholz, S., & Kohn, S. C. (1993). The buddha and his teachings. Shambhala Publications.

Hardesty, N. A. (2003). Faith cure: Divine healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal movements. Peabody^ eMA MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

Koss-Chioino, J. (2006). Spiritual transformation and healing: Anthropological, theological, neuroscientific, and clinical perspectives. Rowman Altamira.

Kumar, S. M. (2003). An introduction to Buddhism for the cognitive-behavioral therapist. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 9(1), 40-43.

Rinpoche, S. (2012). The Tibetan book of living and dying: a spiritual classic from one of the foremost interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism to the West. Random House.

Schumm, D. Y., & Stoltzfus, M. (2007). Chronic illness and disability: Narratives of suffering and healing in Buddhism and Christianity. Journal of Religion, Disability & Health, 11(3), 5-21.
(Romans 6:23 KJV )(Holy Bible)
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Posted on May 30, 2016Author TutorCategories Question, Questions

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