Making Healthcare Whole: Implementing A Muslim Patient Visitation Program
Muzzammil Ahmadzada, Johns Hopkins University; Waqas Haque, Medical Student, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School
Health and life are of central importance to the Abrahamic religions. Thus, it is unsurprising that over 50,000 patients are annually seen by free clinics run by Muslims or established by mosques in America. This is in line with holistic patient care that focuses on the physical, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing of patients.1 This can largely be attributed to the greater attention afforded to an individual’s total pain, which is a concept expressed by Cicely Sanders as the “suffering that encompasses all of a person’s physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and practical struggles”.2 Spiritual care has been shown to be positively correlated with quality of life in diseased individuals and in dying patients.2,3
In this presentation, we detail the steps taken to establish a Muslim Patient Visitation Program (MPVS) at Johns Hopkins Hospital, along with key lessons and future plans, followed by a brief focus group discussion. As of 2020, the Johns Hopkins Hospital did not have any volunteer or chaplaincy programs that specifically enlisted visitors to provide spiritual care for hospitalized Muslim patients, despite having a large number of Muslim patients and family members where it could be applied. Working with the Department of Spiritual Care and Chaplaincy, we established a weekly MPVS that consisted of using a hospital census report to gauge location and willingness of Muslim patients to speak to Spiritual Care Volunteers. As of October 2021, the program has been running for one month with over twenty Muslim patients regularly visited.
Results
In the program’s first month, there have been no reports of the patients refusing spiritual care visits or expressing dissatisfaction with the presence of Spiritual Care Volunteers. The primary difficulty the program volunteer has faced has been in maintaining post-discharge communication with patients who do not own a cell phone or are undomiciled. Looking to the future, the MPVS hopes to provide tangible items of spiritual comfort—including the Holy Quran, pamphlets with prayers of healing, and Zamzam water from the city of Mecca—as COVID-19 pandemic visitor restriction guidelines loosen.
Discussion
Visitation programs such as MPVS show that spiritual care is not confined to preaching within formal faith-based establishments. Spiritual care encompasses a panoply of human affairs and existential issues (e.g. identity, meaning, suffering and death), personal values (e.g. important issues and values for oneself), and religious acts (e.g. faith, beliefs and practices).3 This interdisciplinary nature of spiritual care is a key reason that many faiths, such as Islam, do not separate physical health from spiritual health. Islam as a religion incentivizes healthy individuals to visit those that are sick by promising a reward from God and by creating camaraderie among members of a community in this world. Following the presentation about MPVS, there will be a focus group discussion where audience members can share their experiences with programs similar to patient visitation services within their faith tradition.
Sources
1- Ernst, Edzard. “Holistic health care?.” The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners vol. 57,535 (2007): 162-3.
2- Puchalski, Christina M, et al. “Interprofessional Spiritual Care in Oncology: A Literature Review.” ESMO Open, vol. 4, no. 1, Feb. 2019, p. e000465, esmoopen.bmj.com/content/4/1/e000465, 10.1136/esmoopen-2018-000465.
3- Klop, Hanna T., et al. “Strengthening the Spiritual Domain in Palliative Care through a Listening Consultation Service by Spiritual Caregivers in Dutch PaTz-Groups: An Evaluation Study.” BMC Palliative Care, vol. 19, no. 1, 29 June 2020, 10.1186/s12904-020-00595-0. Accessed 19 Feb. 2021.
In this presentation, we detail the steps taken to establish a Muslim Patient Visitation Program (MPVS) at Johns Hopkins Hospital, along with key lessons and future plans, followed by a brief focus group discussion. As of 2020, the Johns Hopkins Hospital did not have any volunteer or chaplaincy programs that specifically enlisted visitors to provide spiritual care for hospitalized Muslim patients, despite having a large number of Muslim patients and family members where it could be applied. Working with the Department of Spiritual Care and Chaplaincy, we established a weekly MPVS that consisted of using a hospital census report to gauge location and willingness of Muslim patients to speak to Spiritual Care Volunteers. As of October 2021, the program has been running for one month with over twenty Muslim patients regularly visited.
Results
In the program’s first month, there have been no reports of the patients refusing spiritual care visits or expressing dissatisfaction with the presence of Spiritual Care Volunteers. The primary difficulty the program volunteer has faced has been in maintaining post-discharge communication with patients who do not own a cell phone or are undomiciled. Looking to the future, the MPVS hopes to provide tangible items of spiritual comfort—including the Holy Quran, pamphlets with prayers of healing, and Zamzam water from the city of Mecca—as COVID-19 pandemic visitor restriction guidelines loosen.
Discussion
Visitation programs such as MPVS show that spiritual care is not confined to preaching within formal faith-based establishments. Spiritual care encompasses a panoply of human affairs and existential issues (e.g. identity, meaning, suffering and death), personal values (e.g. important issues and values for oneself), and religious acts (e.g. faith, beliefs and practices).3 This interdisciplinary nature of spiritual care is a key reason that many faiths, such as Islam, do not separate physical health from spiritual health. Islam as a religion incentivizes healthy individuals to visit those that are sick by promising a reward from God and by creating camaraderie among members of a community in this world. Following the presentation about MPVS, there will be a focus group discussion where audience members can share their experiences with programs similar to patient visitation services within their faith tradition.
Sources
1- Ernst, Edzard. “Holistic health care?.” The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners vol. 57,535 (2007): 162-3.
2- Puchalski, Christina M, et al. “Interprofessional Spiritual Care in Oncology: A Literature Review.” ESMO Open, vol. 4, no. 1, Feb. 2019, p. e000465, esmoopen.bmj.com/content/4/1/e000465, 10.1136/esmoopen-2018-000465.
3- Klop, Hanna T., et al. “Strengthening the Spiritual Domain in Palliative Care through a Listening Consultation Service by Spiritual Caregivers in Dutch PaTz-Groups: An Evaluation Study.” BMC Palliative Care, vol. 19, no. 1, 29 June 2020, 10.1186/s12904-020-00595-0. Accessed 19 Feb. 2021.