LACK OF appropriate training for healthcare staff has sometimes resulted in significant distress being caused to people from minority religions, a new report has found.
The Health, Faith and Equality report looked at the healthcare needs of people from Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist and other backgrounds and found many shortcomings in the provision of services.
Author Dr Katy Radford of Trinity College Dublin noted that adherence to religious practices was heightened at times when people were at their most vulnerable, for example, at times of birth, ill-health and death.
“Considerations into how someone is dressed and decorated, touched or viewed, how they are washed, cut or inscribed to achieve a state of purification, and what they require by means of nourishment, take on an even greater significance for carers and patients alike at the time of death,” she said in the report funded by the Health Research Board.
Routine procedures such as postmortems and organ transplantation presented particular problems. “The Muslim, Jewish and Bahá’í obligations to undertake burial within 24 hours of death presents challenges in the current systems, where the issuing of death certificates is often slow.
“Similarly, the specific prohibitions of some religions in relation to blood donation and transfusions raises ethical questions for medics.”
The report said communication difficulties, the inadequate training of professionals, the use of medications containing animal derivative and differing approaches to procedures such as circumcision, were all barriers to a quality service.
It highlighted problems such as patients’ children being used to translate gynaecological terms for their mothers; a lack of recognition of the needs of Muslim women for privacy; and clashes between staff and families over the treatment of a body after death.
It said there were no national protocols or guidelines in a variety of languages relating to faith in healthcare settings. Staff were frustrated by the lack of guidelines on balancing legal and medical requirements with cultural expectations.
Dr Radford said there was “an urgent need” for public awareness programmes and educational programmes for medical staff, addressing issues such as human rights violations, social justice and trans-cultural healthcare.
“The focus should be on how a patient’s religious and ethnic background can be sensitively and positively used to improve their health and to provide an individualistic service to the patient.” Dr Radford also called for a “meaningful public discussion” about the continuation of the role of the Christian churches in providing healthcare and policy direction.
