Healing Hospitals and Spirituality - Essay Example

?Healing Hospitals and Spirituality Currently, the health care system in the country is in a big crisis manly due to financial constraints. With the rising insurance and such costs, physicians and doctors are being forced to attend to more patients than they would normally see, and as a result, shorten the periods that they attend to each patient. Bottom-line oriented health care is also one of the factors that degrade the working conditions of the working hospitals in the Western World. Due to the factors mentioned above, some hospitals try to cope with the limitations by cutting the staff that they have available for hospital work. This staffing problem also affects social health centers, which are also forced to expend more staff to administrative functions rather than dealing with the patients. Although the care givers in the health centers understand that patient health is bettered when the physician spends more time with the patient, the financial and staffing problem forces them otherwise. According to Zarren (2003), healing is a process that a patient takes towards wholeness or wellness and the community is a place in which all people interact for a common purpose under common laws and jointly own the society. From these two definitions, it can be agreed that a healing community is a place where all members of the community have the opportunity to heal the patients. Therefore, having a health center as a healing community means having the patient, their families, friends and stakeholders in the hospital (including the physicians and nurses) journey together towards the healing process. This means that all the parties mentioned have an equal state in the healing process, where the common energy encompassing the whole community can be channeled towards the healing process. According to Puchalski and McSkimming (2006), spirituality is the source of meaning in life, including an individual’s continuous search for meaning and transcendence in life. Spirituality is most common during times of illness and pain, where the individual is closest to the spiritual paradigm. For some individuals, spirituality encompasses religious practices, nature, art or the community and is the lifeline that sustains the practices of the whole community. During times of stress and challenging times, spirituality is the essential part of humanness that sustains the individual. Many health care providers realize that their own spirituality usually helps in sustaining the health of the patient and finding meaning in their own profession. When the caregiver addresses the spirituality in their patients, they also find meaning to their own life and existence. With the current problems in the health care setting, caregivers find a challenge in invoking their own spirituality in finding a purpose for their patients’ existence. However, it should be noted that healing communities and spirituality are the most effective ways of ensuring that the patient receives the health care needed in the hospital and uses the energy of the community towards effective recovery in the health care center. The main components of effective healing communities include those that connect the patient to the community and a sense of connectivity with the health care professional. As stated, the spirituality of the patient and caregiver helps in healing the patient. This is also supported by the following scripture, “A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones” (Proverbs 17:22). This means that the healing process is best done when the patient is cheerful and feels supported by every member in the healing process. One of the main components of a healing community is the personal nature of the caregivers in the setting (Puchalski & McSkimming, 2006). The health care system in the country is usually perceived as lacking a personal tough in provision of health care to the patients. The lack of passionate and personalized care in the health care system is caused by a lack of enough staff to attend to each patient separately. Many medical students usually comment that when they are learning, they learn important medical values, but when they are practicing, the places in which they practice lack the experience of inculcating spirituality with quality health care. As already noted caregivers who learn to connect with the spiritual side of their patients learn that they are able to provide more personalized health care and nurture their own spiritual awareness and maturity. The other component of a healing hospital is the issue of respect for human life and the patient being attended to by the caregivers (Puchalski & McSkimming, 2006). From a spiritual point of view, the caregiver acts as an agent for a higher power, and for the patient to achieve complete healing, the patient should be able to feel at peace in the environment being used. This means that a healing hospital provides a safe environment which has a respect for the healing qualities that are offered by interpersonal caring, human nurturing and the spiritual aspect. The healing hospital is also characterized by an environment that provides healing, educative and spiritual human experiences to the patient being taken care of by the hospital. As noted, the spiritual part of healing includes an interaction with the patient at an inner level, and the provision of educational and spiritual experiences will help a patient heal faster. This component of a healing hospital is supported by another component, one that recognizes and promotes the self-healing abilities of each individual. Despite the need for community interaction in ensuring the individual is completely healed, it is also the responsibility of the patient to recognize the value of self-healing, which helps if the patient is not to relapse. A hospital as a healing community also respects the dignity and uniqueness of each individual in the system, and strives to ensure that the needs of all people who come to serve and be healed are respected (Puchalski & McSkimming, 2006). The healing community also values diversity as a source of human richness, and uses the diversity as a means of providing a center that is targeted at healing each individual in the community. The diversity component is also noted in the caregivers, where their diversity is valued as a means of creating strength from a diverse group whose sole aim is to alleviate suffering in individuals, regardless of their diversity. The healing community also holds the belief that language, age, sex or racial differences are not barriers to the provision of quality health care to the individuals in the system, and that physical disabilities are not sources of loneliness. Despite the need for healing environments and communities, one of the main challenges faced in their implementation is the development of staff to differentiate between spiritual care from good customer service (Puchalski & McSkimming, 2006). As already mentioned, the healing community involves an interaction with all stakeholders in the hospitals, and some caregivers take this to mean good customer service as opposed to spiritual care. Even if some of the activities are kind and service-oriented, they do not reflect spirituality, and the challenge faced is training the health care professionals to provide true spiritual care. The other challenge faced is staff educational sessions and practices. With the current constraints in finances, which in turn led to staff shortages, finding time to teach the staff in healing centers about the components of healing communities remains a massive challenge. As previously stated, the biggest constraint to the health sector is the financial part, where many hospitals are forced to cut staffing costs. This means that the remaining staff has a lot of work, and finding time to train them in spiritual healing remains a challenge. References Puchalski, C., and McSkimming, S. (2006). Creating Healing Environments. Supportive Voice. Zarren, H. (2003). Hospitals as Healing Communities. FACC. Read More