Cultural Adaptability and Spirituality

Cultural adaptability and spirituality
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The Purnell model has twelve cultural domains that health practitioners can utilize to improve the health of the patients under their care. The spiritual and death rituals constructs in the Purnell model are mainly used in the healthcare to guide practitioners in offering care that is in tandem with patients’ spiritual and death rituals aspects of culture. It requires that practitioners engage in culturally sensitive practices that give strength and meaning to patients and their families. It also entails allowing patients to engage in death rituals and religious practices such as prayer in the healthcare setting (Tortumluoglu, 2008).
Religious Practices
Traditionally, the Zulu people paid spiritual allegiance to a political king and to ancestors through rituals. Zulus also consult diviners or izangoma to determine the cause of trouble or misfortunes. Diviners would consult ancestors because Zulu people perceive ancestors as their guardians who are responsible for their wellbeing. Diviners communicate with ancestors to protect people from illnesses that result from sorcery and when preparing medicine to treat those affected by Africa specific illnesses. In the modern day, many Zulus have converted to Christianity and pay allegiance to uNkulunkulu as their God. Their belief in uNkulunkulu as the supreme being and the sole creator is similar to the general Christian theology. Christian Zulus are not dependent on diviners and thus pray on their own or with the assistance of priests and preachers to gain inner strength and healing (Weir, 2008).
Use of prayer
Zulu Christians engage in dramatic payers that may be characterized by anguished wailing about sin. They consider sin as the cause of their trouble as opposed the traditional belief in ancestral causes and take joy in the power of the holy spirit that makes them holy (Houle, 2012). For modern Christians, health practitioners require allowing priests, preachers and time for prayer for their patients. This is because Christians consider uNkulunkulu as their source of strength, healing, and one that gives meaning to life.
Individual Strength
Zulus draw their individual strength from communizing together with others. The Zulu Zionists is one of the religious groups that has a strong basis on providing communal support to members that are ill or in distress. Zulu Zionists wear special attire and focus their prayers on deliverance form occult sources of trouble perceived to emanate from relationships with non-Zionists. Other Zulus draw their strength from traditional healers who provide treatment for illnesses and substances that invigorate energy and health into the individual members of the society. Healers create harmony between gods of the ancestors and the living to restore Zulu’s individual strength. Zulus engage in singing, dancing and chanting to appease ...