Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham, UK.
Health Care Anal. 2013 Sep;21(3):259-70. doi: 10.1007/s10728-013-0249-0.
In the healthcare sector, race, ethnicity and religion have become an increasingly important factor in terms of patient care due to an increasingly diverse population. Health agencies at a national and local level produce a number of guides to raise awareness of cultural issues among healthcare professionals and hospitals may implement additional non-medical services, such as the provision of specific types of food and dress to patients or the hiring of chaplains, to accommodate the needs of patients with religious requirements. However, in an attempt to address the spiritual, cultural and religious needs of patients healthcare providers often assume that ethnic minority groups are homogenous blocks of people with similar needs and fail to recognize that a diverse range of views and practices exist within specific groups themselves. This paper describes the example of the Sikh community and the provision of palliative care in hospitals and hospices. Although, the majority of patients classifying themselves as Sikhs have a shared language and history, they can also be divided on a number of lines such as caste affiliation, degree of assimilation in the west, educational level and whether baptized or not, all of which influence their beliefs and practices and hence impact on their needs from a health provider. Given that it is unfeasible for health providers to have knowledge of the multitude of views within specific religious and ethnic communities and accounting for the tight fiscal constraints of healthcare budgets, this paper concludes by raising the question whether healthcare providers should step away from catering for religious and cultural needs that do not directly affect treatment outcomes, and instead put the onus on individual communities to provide resources to meet spiritual, cultural and religious needs of patients.
在医疗保健领域，由于人口日益多样化，种族、民族和宗教已成为患者护理方面日益重要的因素。国家和地方级别的卫生机构编写了许多指南，以提高医疗保健专业人员对文化问题的认识，医院可能会提供额外的非医疗服务，例如为有宗教要求的患者提供特定类型的食物和服装，或聘请牧师，以满足患者的需求。然而，在试图满足患者的精神、文化和宗教需求时，医疗服务提供者常常认为少数民族是具有相似需求的同质人群，而没有认识到在特定群体内部存在着各种各样的观点和做法。本文以锡克教社区在医院和临终关怀机构中提供姑息治疗为例。虽然大多数自称为锡克教徒的患者有着共同的语言和历史，但他们也可以根据种姓从属关系、在西方的同化程度、教育程度以及是否受洗等因素进行划分，所有这些因素都会影响他们的信仰和实践，从而影响他们对医疗服务提供者的需求。鉴于医疗服务提供者不可能了解特定宗教和族裔社区内部的众多观点，并且考虑到医疗保健预算的财政紧张，本文最后提出了一个问题，即医疗服务提供者是否应该放弃满足那些不会直接影响治疗结果的宗教和文化需求，而是将责任推给各个社区，让他们提供资源来满足患者的精神、文化和宗教需求。
