Buddhism Religion: Health, Illness, Spirituality

Buddhism Religion
Name
Institution
In order to provide high quality care and thus improve patient outcomes/ patient satisfaction and enhance compliance, health care providers should understand all factors affecting health decisions in their patients. Among the numerous factors affecting the nursing practice is that of religion. As a result of religious beliefs, patients will make different decisions. For instance while Christians will want the nurse to allow their spiritual leaders to pray for them and assure them that they are not being punished for their sins but rather tried to enhance their faith, Buddhists live ethically in order to achieve Nirvana, a state of life free of suffering. This essay will explain the influence of Buddhism religion in nursing in terms of health, illness, spirituality, pregnancy-childbirth, and death/ dying.
Buddhism religion is centered on Buddha. Buddha is not considered a god but instead an example of the way of life. It is therefore required that people withdraw from world and follow the ways of Buddha in order to learn how live more respectively and wiser lives. It is by living ethical lives that a person would reincarnate to a good creature. By believing in reincarnation, Buddhists accept responsibility of their actions. They operate with the doctrine of Karma in which good or evil ways are rewarded or punished respectively in one’s life or after reincarnation (Numrich, 2013).
When offering care to Buddhists, nurses should understand the beliefs that guide their ways of life. For instance, for Buddhists, life starts at conception and thus do not prohibit contraception. However, actions that will take lives such as active euthanasia or abortion are condemned. In addition, organ transplantation and blood transfusion are allowed since they help to save lives. Since Buddhists believe in rebirth following death, a person’s state of the mind before death is crucial as it determines the rebirth state. As a result, nurses should help patients from this religion to have a relaxed state of the mind before death. This is by allowing a person to their last wishes followed.
Patients should encourage cultivation of wholesome mindset via consideration of one’s spiritual virtues and contemplation of dharma. According to Rumun (2014), these activities are noted to have healing efficacy. It is also notable that patients should differentiate physical pain from mental pain so as to fasten healing. This way, when a person is sick in the body, it is easy to free his mind from the sickness. While a patient who is sick in the body will experience changes in the body, this does not mean that he should fall into lamentation, sorrow, distress, pain, or despair because of the change. When a patient understands the functioning of celestial Buddhas, he would have facilitated enlightenment that has implications in health, general wellbeing, and healing. Buddha is considered very important in times of illnesses as he helps in overcoming the negative impacts of Karma at death. To achieve this, nurses should allow enough time for patients to pray and if possible, be accompanied by other Buddhists in prayer. Even though nurses should inform patients of the importance of nursing care, they should al...