Religion versus treatments is a noted by disputed concern in nursing and medical field. Religious beliefs are totally regards some practices and procedures that are recommended for through the medical institutions. For instance, healthcare facilities supports the procedure of blood transfers as it helps in saving person’s life but some religion come up against it. Religion also is not going to sustain problems like abortion and the process of issuing sedatives to the very mentally ill persons. A healthcare facility encourages abortion if it brings about health related problems to a person. Religion detests abortion as in a wrong way views this murder (Frohwirth, Coleman & Moore, 2018). This paper attempts to show how religious beliefs hinder the treatments in the medical arena.
Firstly, religious and personal beliefs are making communication with the family a challenge and fear of litigation by the nurses. According to a research carried out by Ntantana et al. (2017), a stochastically higher number of nurses (81.1%) compared with the doctors (66.9%) believed that the family should be made aware about decisions to forego life-sustaining treatments. They do not disclose such information to the families since the second parties would not be able to understand the medical information, and because they fear litigation. It is found that personality and religious characteristics influence the end of life issues. There are few studies examining the influence of religious beliefs and personality on decisions to forego life-sustaining treatments. Nurses and doctors together with the patients should keep apart their religious and personal issues when it comes to matters of health. In case of blood donation, they should co-operate to do it to save more lives.
Secondly, it is well verified that deaths in the intensive care unit brings about a notable emotional intention on healthcare personnel. Ntantana et al. (2017) found that personality and religious orientation may obstruct decision making in respect to specific vital decisions in saving the lives, causing collective issues between people with different personality and religious beliefs which may obstruct the teamwork in the intensive care unit and increase the emotional freight and fatigue among intensive care unit professionals. Unfortunately, it cannot easily divert their personality and religious orientation; nevertheless, by promoting the communication between hospitals personnel, involving the nursing staff in the life saving decisions, and discussing on a regular basis the ethical dilemmas faced daily in the intensive care unit, they can improve the feeling of quality care and reduce job tensity.
Additionally, personality is defined as distinctive and comparatively experiencing ways of thinking, feeling and acting. According to Ntantana et al. (2017), nurses and females scored higher on neuroticism compared with physicians and males while a higher score for psychoticism was found in males. Ntantana et al. (2017) postulated that there is a bias regarding these contrasts in the psychological identity between doctors and nurses because there was a prevalence of females in their sample. Ntantana et al. also found that these two categorical variables were maverickally related to neuroticism. Concerning the relationship between the personality profile and the attitude against intensive care unit and lifesaving decisions professionals with high scores on neuroticism prefer the term passive euthanasia over futile care, and professionals with psychoticism withhold information from the family for fear of litigation (Ntanatana et al., 2017). Therefore nursing personnel should not let their personalities influence them during decision making.
In conclusion, differences in our personalities and religions have greatly influenced medical and nursing activities in health facilities. They have hindered the ways the hospital professional disseminate treatment information to the patients and their families. These differences have also brought impacts on how nurses and doctors make lifesaving decisions, mostly in intensive care units. Therefore, all the hospital personnel should work together to ensure that their religion and personal orientations do not affect them during these vital points of life.
References
Frohwirth, L., Coleman, M., Moore, A.M. (2018 November 21). Managing Religion and Morality Within the Abortion Experience: Qualitative Interviews With Women Obtaining Abortions in the U.S. NCBI. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6424365/
Ntantana, A. et al. (2017 July 21). The impact of healthcare professionals’ personality and religious beliefs on the decisions to forego life sustaining treatments: an observational, multicentre, cross-sectional study in Greek intensive care units. NCBI. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577864/