How is God calling you to respond to the influx of alternative therapies in healthcare?
The Occult Invasion of Health Care
The Changing Face of Spirituality in Medicine
The New Role of Nursing in Spiritual Care
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "No, not if you did not know."
Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
There are over 2.9 million nurses in the United States alone. Of this number, about 1.7 million nurses claim to have a relationship with traditional Christianity. This represents a vast majority of nurses.
Nursing is a noble vocation. The number one reason that nurses become nurses is that "they care about people". Fewer professions have a more altruistic motive than this. Nurses work long hours. Many work 12 hours a day and sometimes must double back to cover another shift. The nursing profession is understaffed, are required to take extensive chart notes on patients, while also providing faultless care. It is no wonder that many tire easily, are burned-out and the turnover rate is high contributing to the nationwide shortage of nurses.
Establishing the model and paradigm for nursing was one of the first and most influential nurses, Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820 in Derbyshire, England. At the age of seventeen, she strongly believed that she had heard God speaking to her and had called her to feel that her life was to have a great purpose. At the age of 31, Nightingale attended Institute Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth, Germany. Following her studies, she became superintendent at the Institution of the Sick in London.
Nightingale's mission became clear when the Crimean War broke out in 1854 and England decided to send thirty-eight nurses to help with the war effort. It was here on the filth of the hospitals on the battlefield that others recognized her relentless work as a nurse. So great was her dedication, that Florence is today, "The Lady of the Lamp" for the long hours she put in. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned theses words in 1857 about Florence Nightingale:
Lo! In that hour of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
Florence Nightingale essentially molded the first and most influential nursing model. All nurses ever since, have had to walk in her footsteps.
A majority of nurses are a part of the largest nursing auxiliary in the United States: The American Nurses Association. This association is the only full-service professional organization representing nurses. Fifty-one nurses' associations and twenty-four specialty nursing and workforce advocacy organizations connect directly to the ANA. The ANA holds nurses to the highest standards of nursing practice, promotes the rights of nurses in the workplace, and tries to project a positive and realistic view of nursing. It's of code of ethics is virtuous and forthright, stressing the high standards which nurses are required to keep. The ANA has defined the role of professional nursing as:
- Provision of a caring relationship that facilitates health and healing,
- Attention to the range of human experiences and responses to health and illness within the physical and social environments,
- Integration of objective data with knowledge gained from an appreciation of the patient or group's subjective experience,
- Application of scientific knowledge to the processes of diagnosis and treatment through the use of judgment and critical thinking,
- Advancement of professional nursing knowledge through scholarly inquiry, and
- Influence on social and public policy to promote social justice. 1
Nursing Theory has changed many times since the days of Florence Nightingale. Originally, there was Nightingale's Model of Nursing followed by Roper, Logan and Tierney. Roger's: Science of Unitary Human Beings was quite influential. Nevertheless, new theories have continued to come along with the passage of time. The recently developed Medical Home Theory is rapidly replacing another standard, the Family Centered Care model. This model though influential, is now obsolete.
The Medical Home Theory stresses several principles: 1.) A personal physician; 2.) Physician directed care; 3.) Whole person orientation; 4.) Integrated Care; 5.) Quality and Safety; and 6.) Enhanced access. In understanding the idea of changing face of spirituality in medicine, it is imperative to understand the influence of the Medical Home model of medicine on the patient's spiritual care.
Three ingredients of the theory are of note. The idea that the individual is a Whole Person has improved health care. It has helped us understand that patients are more than a disease process. Individuals are of unique worth comprised of body, mind and spirit. This idea has brought about the realization that intrinsically involved in the patient's care, is the need to recognize and address their spirituality. As a part of nursing theory, the area of spirituality has expanded to include care for both the physical and emotional needs of the patient, as well as the sphere of spirituality.
Another aspect of the Medical Home Theory is Enhanced Access. Enhanced Access interprets the realm of spiritual care to mean that we must allow maximum patient access to all spiritual practices - after all, "There are many pathways to God". Collectively, in this system of care, each spiritual belief system is of equal value.
Reinforcing this concept, the Medical Home Theory has appropriated Philosophy's dogma of Moral Relativism. Relativism states that all things being equal, what is not right for one individual may be right for another based on the changing nature of circumstances. The usual illustration that relativists use is the metaphor of seven people lost at sea. One person is weak and his outlook bleak nevertheless the others may not survive if this person does not die. Moral Relativism would state that the need of the group outweighs the need of the individual. To the relativist, it is all right to throw the man overboard; after all, he is going to die anyway.
Providing the basis for the concept of Moral Relativism is the idea of personal Individualism.
Individualism maintains that values the needs of the individual above all else. More than anything other component of the Medical Home Theory, Enhanced Access has opened the door to the virtual floodgate of spiritual practices that are rapidly becoming integrated with health care.
The third ingredient of the Medical Home Theory that affects nursing practice is Integrated Care. Integrating Care means that all disciplines must provide care together, in a seamless manner. Seamless care has also come to mean that all disciplines now have a role in meeting the spiritual needs of patients. Physicians usually do not spend large amounts of time with patients. More than any other group, nurses have access to patients and the greatest responsibility to ensure that their spiritual needs are met.
This does not mean the nurse must pray for patients or provide religious rituals. However, it does mean that nurses must make sure this care is available. Many nurses, seeing some patient's lack of response to traditional therapies, urgently want to see their suffering reduced. This new role in the patient's spiritual care has caused many nurses to develop an interest in alternative therapies. As believers in Christ, we must understand that many "alternative therapies" are incongruent with Christianity. Alternative therapies offer a different view from Florence Nightingale's vision in which she heard God's voice and his call to work as a nurse.
By Michael Elmore
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