RAMCOM: A tool for communication with Muslim patients considering fasting during Ramadan Ahmed Abdelmageed, PharmD, Manchester University RAMCOM: A tool for communication with Muslim patients considering fasting during Ramadan Objectives: 1) Explore clinicians’ perspectives on factors affecting care provided to Muslim patients considering fasting Ramadan.
2) Propose a communication tool, RAMCOM, that can assist clinicians in caring for such patients and gathers perspectives on its implementability.
Design: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of clinicians in Egypt (11) and the US (10). Clinicians were purposefully sampled to assure variance in age, gender, time in practice, specialty, and religious background. Data emerging from narratives were mapped to constructs within Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). Using framework analysis, iterative sampling and analysis continued until saturation.
Results: Twenty physicians and one ambulatory care pharmacist were interviewed. Drawing on SCT, clinicians’ beliefs were mapped and clustered into self-efficacy (belief in ability to care for those patients), collective efficacy (belief in medical group’s ability to provide care), outcome expectations (anticipated consequences of providing such care), knowledge of Islam, Ramadan, and fasting guidelines, observational learning (learning by observing other clinicians), normative beliefs (cultural norms and beliefs about acceptability and prevalence of care provision), environmental barriers and opportunities, and behavioral skills (communication approach). Factors contributing to using RAMCOM included perception of tool (need for use, perceived burden of use), perceived norm (perceived patient expectations), and ability to use tool (time, frequency of seeing patients, knowledge of Ramadan and Islam).
Conclusion: Clinicians provided valuable perceptions on caring for Muslim patients and on the implementability of RAMCOM. To facilitate better care for Muslim patients considering fasting, these perceptions should be considered by different stakeholders including educators.
