By Lakshmi Kothaneth — MUSCAT: Feb 20 - Islamic history reveals there was a trust established at the time of Khalifa Omar Ibn al Khattab where individuals used to spread “good news’ about a patient to help them cope with illness. Now, it is part of modern medicine, according to experts at the Oman Cancer Association’s (OCA) workshop on spiritual therapy. Experts said Islamic chaplaincy plays an important role in spiritual therapy, especially in palliative care. On the second day of the workshop, the focus was on spiritual therapy from the Islamic perspective, with His Eminence Sheikh Dr Kahlan al Kharousi defining spirituality within Islam.
The aim of the workshop is to offer a unique framework because it integrates religious counsellors as part of a medical team in which he/she will get access to medical records and communicate with physicians and nurses vis-a-vis the condition of the patient.
Doctors and nurses will implement knowledge and skills they have learned at their place of work to make patient care comprehensive.
Providing spiritual care services and assessing individual needs of each patient is the right of a patient and an Islamic obligation.
It is a right whether the patient is a Muslim or a non-Muslim. It is part of the quality service hospitals should offer. The concept is not about taking the patient to a higher level, but about meeting the patient where they are. The power of healing is universal.
“In the United States, we are working in different institutions of health care, prisons, armed forces and education. Yes, we have obstacles and one of them is being a minority. It’s very hard as we have a shortage of qualified chaplains. In the community itself, there is lack of awareness about the existence of the service. Due to the privacy law, often you will not have access to medical records of patients you are working with. We need to work as a team,” Kamal Abu Shamsieh who works as an on-call chaplain at Stanford Hospital and Clinics and Hinds Hospice in California. To promote the concept of Islamic chaplaincy, Dr Kamal travelled to Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
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