Religion Culture and Nursing
Religious practices and beliefs act as mediators in the process of health-disease. Religious is a common resource in healthcare whereby it gives hope to the patients and makes them feel less guilty. Despite the fact religious gives hope to the patients, it can as well reduce dependence on the medical staff which can be a dangerous thing. Different religions come up with different beliefs about specific diseases and therefore it can lead to a dilemma on the death and disease experience which are received in peculiar ways (Kluwer, 2017). For many patients, religious is very important because health professionals especially the nurses need to know that beliefs can make a patient more or less willing to get treatment. In addition to that, religious and spiritual activities are most of the time added to the treatment and therapy which gives hope to the patient and reduces the fear of diseases.
When it comes to comparing and contrasting religious practices between Christianity and Buddhism, there are many factors to consider. The first factor is the origin of the diseases. Christianity believes that the body is meant for glorifying God. So if a person does not do so, then it means that there are consequences in both the actual life and in the afterlife. Sickness is one of the consequences. They also believe that the devil is behind the diseases especially if the patient glorified God but still got sick. Their main solution is to repent and ask God for forgiveness to be relieved off the sickness according to them. The medication comes in whereby they believe that only God helps people who help themselves. Therefore they seek medication in the name of helping themselves. Christians believe that the body is the temple of God (Sorajjakool & Bursey, 2017); this belief makes them take care of the body by avoiding several practices like substance use, for instance, alcohol. Understanding that fact spiritually has a potential benefit to both the patients and the nurses because it reduces diseases related to substance abuse like cancer.
On the other hand, Buddhism believes that diseases come from karma whereby a person welcome the suffering in different ways like doing wrong to other people and desire. That religious belief is beneficial to the believers because they reduce physical injury to other people believing that it will also happen to them. Buddhism beliefs that root of all the suffering is desire. They believe that desire to be like other people or to have a good life makes people commit evil and in the process, karma follows them (Kluwer, 2017). The consequences according to Buddhism are that the way one treats other people is the same way karma will punish the person. They believe that if a person gets sick, the person deserves it and therefore medication is just a way of reducing pain and suffering. They also believe that if somebody rises, will fall, reducing the fear of death. They know that death is a must; medication is just to reduce the suffering meaning that they view medication as a very important tool.
Another comparison between Christianity and Buddhism is what they believe about good health. Christian’s views good health as a blessing from God. Christians believe that if a person is healthy, it is for a purpose and the most important is to glorify God (Şenel, 2019). The next thing is to take care of the sick, they believe that healthy people should visit the sick most of the time and pray for them so that God can also bless them with good health. The fact is very important when it comes to healthcare because there are a lot of nurses who are Christians. Even though they are doing nursing as a career, they also do it to take care of the sick because of their belief. It helps in the production of quality healthcare services from nurses and the hospital as a whole. Buddhism, on the other hand, views good health as pure because the person with good health is free from karma. They view medication as an analogy of noble truth. They know that the only way of avoiding sickness is by knowing the illness, abandoning the illness cause, relying on the treatment of medication and aspiring the cure. All these cannot take place without help from nurses and healthcare as a whole and it is beneficial to both the patients and the nurses (Kluwer, 2017). It is beneficial in that the believers will go to the hospital to know the medical problems and deal with it and therefor increasing good health.
There are several issues which can be maybe better addressed by a nursing care staff with an understanding of religious beliefs. The first healthcare issue is drinking and smoking. According to most religious understanding, including Christianity and Buddhism, they believe that drinking and smoking is a sin because it leads to immorality (Şenel, 2019). According to the belief, nurses can address the smoking and drinking health issue based on sin but in the medical perspective to reduce sicknesses like cancer and liver cirrhosis. Another health issue that nurses can address with the religious background is the issue of HIV/AIDS. The most common cause of HIV/AIDS in the world is through sexual intercourse. Holly scriptures from different religions forbid sex before marriage and sleeping with another man’s wife. Therefore, nurses can use that fact in encouraging abstinence and in the long run they will be preventing diseases like HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases like syphilis and gonorrhoea.
References
Kluwer, W. (2017). Wolters Kluwer. Religion, Culture, and Nursing, chapter 13
Şenel, E. (2019). Dharmic religions and health: A holistic analysis of global health literature related to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. Journal of religion and health, 58(4), 1161-1171.
SSorajjakool, S., Carr, M. F., Nam, J. J., Sorajjakool, S., & Bursey, E. (Eds.). (2017). World religions for healthcare professionals. Taylor & Francis.