Every day I walk in the hallways of the hospital where I
work as a chaplain for the last 14 years. Although I love my job, I’m always
uncomfortable visiting with a young patient who is fighting for his or her life.
Even more tough is dealing with parents of kids living their last days.
In one of the famous Children’s Hospital where I frequent
to provide care to destressed patients and or family, Kisha (name changed) a 3
weeks baby boy is a patient fighting for his life. Kisha sustained a broken
skull from mysterious circumstances that neither the mother nor grandma can
explain.The 3 weeks-old boy from out of town had been at the hospital for almost 2 months being treated for blunt force trauma on the skull. His family had held a nonstop vigil by his bedside for weeks.
Already in a coma, Kisha had been declared brain dead; his brain had stopped functioning a few days upon admission in the NICU, a decision that was made by his team of doctors. But his family said their faith, as Christians didn’t define death as such and sought a court order to keep him on life support.
As time went by, the conflict began to draw political attention and before the court made its decision, Kisha’s heart stopped beating on its own ending the debate.
As a professional chaplain and pastoral care provider, my goal was to help Kisha’s parents make informed decision on the care they would want their son receive. I could see their agony as they navigate the very complicated family ethics meetings from which they were given enormous information and were expected to make decision asap.
While religion and medicine don’t always collide so dramatically, the two realms do coexist. It is clear that when “religious beliefs and practices are tightly interwoven with cultural contexts”(i), both constitute a powerful reminder of the healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling power of sustaining, guiding, and reconciling power of religious faith.
However the intersections between them are sometime uncomfortable.
A case in review is from a different ethics meeting not related to Kisha, where a famous experienced Pediatrician was getting ready to treat a child for Candida Yeast Infection. Dr. Yuko ( name changed), had the whole family in the family consultation room explaining the treatment when the grandmother stood up and said, ‘I think I understand everything, doctor, but all I need to know now is whether you’re a Christian.”
Unfazed, the doctor (who was Moslem) handled the
situation gracefully by saying, “Ma’am, I’m as Christian as you need me to be.”[ii] Luckily, that answer
sufficed. Religion is a deeply emotional and personal topic, and some may argue
that a person’s faith and his health are unrelated. On this I disagree.
Over the period I have served as Hospital chaplain, I
have learned that many physicians find religion a tough subject to integrate in
healthcare practices. Religion is hard to talk about because it’s felt so
deeply and matters so much. When you talk about an issue you run the risk of
disagreeing. And disagreeing about religious beliefs can be painful for a lot
of people, including the author of this article.However, it is important to note that medicine is a practice that applies science in ways that depend on one’s moral and spiritual ideas about what it means to be human. Hospital Chaplains, of who I am, serve as members of patient care teams by; participation in medical rounds and patient care conferences, offering perspectives on the spiritual status of patients and participation in interdisciplinary education to both patient and staff.
There are areas where patients or loved ones and doctors
disagree and this is the case of Kisha on how to apply science, faith and yet
keep politics out of medical field.
While the AMA requires medical schools to teach students
how to at least inquire about a patient’s religion, and more than 80 percent of
medical schools address spirituality in their curricula, this training is
usually embedded in an ethics or humanities course and is sometimes an
elective.[iii]
In the last few days our Television international briefs are
occupied by the story of Charlie Gard an 11 month old boy in London who is in
legal battle to keep his life support machine running. Both the Pope and
President of the Unites States of America have weighed in this case. The Pope weighing
on religious views while the later weighs on political. The London
hospital where Charlie is being treated has asked permission to remove him from
life support.
Now the British infant is at the center of a global
debate over what medical treatment, if any, he is entitled to receive, and who
decides — his family, his doctors or the courts.
Charlie’s case echoes Terri Schiavo case, a young Florida
woman who was left in a persistent vegetative state for over 10 years after a
cardiac arrest and was also the subject of a court battle.
According to New York Times, Charlie has been treated
since October 2017 at Great Ormond Street Hospital, where doctors eventually
decided that withdrawing life support was the only justifiable option. Do Charlie’s
parents have parental responsibility religious or otherwise to override control
vested in the court by the court exercising its independent and objective
judgment in the child’s best interests? Is the Pope the moral person to set
presidency on medical care for Charlie? Should the president of the United
States be involved in matters of medical decision making especially Charlies
case which is out of his jurisdiction?
Should Doctors be final as far as the care of patients is concerned?
This and many other questions lead us to question the role of politics in
patient care.
From an individual point, I belief faith is part of care
for patients healing.