What are some religious, cultural, and spiritual beliefs regarding death and dying?

What are some religious, cultural, and spiritual beliefs regarding death and dying?

What are some religious, cultural, and spiritual beliefs regarding death and dying?

Death and Dying Sample

Death and dying are complex subject especially when religious, cultural, and spiritual beliefs clash with conventional medical interventions during end-of-life care. This may present challenging ethical dilemmas to healthcare providers as they try to provide clinical care that holistically meets the patient’s needs and wishes. Religion, culture, and spirituality has been shown to play a critical role during the dying process. Their roles include bringing meaning and purpose in life, transcendence with self and with a higher being, appreciation of life, and attitude and closure towards death among others (Pentaris et al., 2022). It is, therefore, an important aspect of an individual’s end-of-life process that should be addressed.

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There is immense diversity in religion, culture, and spirituality of the population across the world. Each population group holds distinctive beliefs regarding death and dying. Christians for example believe in the acceptance of death as the will of God and that there is life after death based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ who conquered death (Choudry et al., 2018). As a result, there is no fear of death and the focus at the end of life is to seek forgiveness that will lead to communion with God. Christians consider life sacred and thus do not allow medical interventions such as euthanasia.

Advance care planning and end-of-life care are rarely implemented in some Sub-Saharan communities. This is because death is regarded as a taboo and talking about it can hasten death thus any discussions regarding end-of-life care are generally avoided (Gafaar et al., 2020). A good death is generally perceived as one with minimal suffering and burden, occurring at an optimal timing, and when an individual has spiritual and religious wellness among other features (Gafaar et al., 2020). This shows that there is value in the quality of life of a dying individual. There is thus a need for clinicians to understand their patients’ beliefs which will guide the provision of religiously, culturally, and spiritually sensitive care that meets the needs of the patients.

References

Choudry, M., Latif, A., & Warburton, K. (2018). An overview of the spiritual importances of end-of-life care among the five major faiths of the United Kingdom. Clinical Medicine, 18(1), 23-31. https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.18-1-23

Gafaar, T., Pesambili, M., Henke, O., Vissoci, J., Mmbaga, B., & Staton, C. (2020). Good death: An exploratory study on perceptions and attitudes of patients, relatives, and healthcare providers, in northern Tanzania. PLOS ONE, 15(7), e0233494. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233494

Pentaris, P., & Tripathi, K. (2022). Palliative Professionals’ Views on the Importance of Religion, Belief, and Spiritual Identities toward the End of Life. International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health, 19(10), 6031. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19106031

 

What are some religious, cultural, and spiritual beliefs regarding death and dying?