Religious Freedom and Removing Barriers

¶ … Religious Freedom and Removing Barriers to Patient Care I believe that it was important for Mercy Medical Center to write a policy to allow the presence of a shaman because the hospital recognized that the absence of such a policy was having an adverse impact on that community's likelihood to seek out medical services.

This policy reflects an awareness of the community the hospital was trying to serve, a recognition of the obstacles that community members experienced when accessing care, and a solution that the hospital could implement to encourage patients to come to the hospital.

Furthermore, even though the hospital had an informal policy that essentially recognized the same benefits, having a written policy is an important improvement, because that written policy could give patients reassurance that they would be entitled to such care, not just that the hospital was not opposed to such care. For people so committed to the idea of a shaman being involved in medical care that they would sometimes delay or avoid medical treatment because of a fear of lack of access to those services.

Having the written policy provides assurance that the hospital understands their religious concerns and will, therefore, encourage them to seek medical care. B. I find it very interesting that other local hospitals are reluctant to write similar policies. Their rationale appears to be that it is not appropriate to write policies that target specific ethnic communities.

However, the reality is that different ethnic communities have different concerns, and writing a policy that is specific to one ethnic group does not prevent the hospital from writing policies that are specific to other ethnic groups. The hospitals have a legitimate concern that writing a policy for one group would possibly expose them to liability or even non-legal based allegations of religious discrimination if they did not write similar policies for other ethnic groups.

It would probably be expedient for them to write a policy that is sufficiently inclusive to cover members of all ethnic groups, but they could also write policies that are sufficiently broad enough to cover religious groups that believe that faith / spiritual healers need to be involved in the medical process.

Furthermore, from a spiritual point-of-view, the idea that faith can play an important role in healing is supported by James 5:14-15, which provides, "Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him" (James 5:14-15). C.

One of the most interesting cultural groups in America is the Amish. The Amish have a strong cultural belief in both folk medicine and faith healing, both of which may impact the decision to access modern medical providers and might actually conflict with prescribed medical treatments. However, their traditional healing methods are very successful for minor ailments. Moreover, there is nothing in their religious or cultural practices that prohibits them from seeking "modern" medical treatments when it is absolutely necessary.

However, their definitions of what would be absolutely necessary are probably more stringent than those in mainstream culture. The reasoning behind this is not a fear of modern medicine itself, but based on the cultural tradition that they avoid the world.

However, another reason that many Amish may avoid modern medical treatments is based in more practical concerns; Amish prohibitions against interacting with the outside world mean that most of them do not have health insurance and the high cost of health care prevents many of them from accessing that care. Amish patients may also have difficulty accessing modern.