Culture and Spirituality - Discussion - Essay Example

NURSING, CULTURE AND SPIRITUALITY affiliation Introduction Culture reflects human experiences and behaviors.Professional caregivers should understand their patient’s personal belief systems and respect them. The patient beliefs can affect the care being given and therefore nurses should be careful when dealing with such patients. According to Deer (2013), Purnell theory explains that all health care professions need adequate and similar information when it comes to culture diversity. It elaborates that one’s culture is not better than any other, and that cultures change slowly overtime.

Every person has the right to be respected for his or her cultural heritage and that nurses require information about patient’s culture to be able to give sensitive care. The Yoruba spiritual system has one particular trait in that it stresses on extremely ancient African tradition of connecting with natural forces and its ancestral realm in order to better ones life .Its rooted deep in divination that has similarities to philosophical beliefs like those found in Chinese in the I Ching. The Yoruba culture believes in the existence of divinities and spiritual beings.

They call the beings Orishas who are ancestors whose great actions earned them divinity .They are contacted when a ‘bembe’ priest is possessed spiritually. The possession by the Orishas is part of the religious ritual and acts as a means of communicating with their God. The spirits are seen as intermediaries between humankind and the supernatural. The Yoruba culture is importance since they believe that Orishas helps an individual in determining their personal destiny and their success since the spirits run through all inanimate, living and all things.

Therefore, patients may require that priest be brought to summon the gods for healing. Nurses should therefore be aware of the patient’s culture and fully respect it. (Eggenberger, 2006, pp 34) Deep spiritual seeking are universal traits and most of them come from divination. The Chinese culture mostly looks upwards towards heavenly bodies like the planets and stars not only to understand seasons but for signs to acquire divine will. The Yoruba culture and divination uses bones for rituals.

The Chinese Taoists uses patterns on tortoise shells that eventually evolve into hexagons of the I Ching. This is one of the differences between the two traits.Conclusion Divination systems are passed down by ancestors’ through sacred heritage. They provide fresh guidance especially during changes in our lives and they are a form of good fortune. It helps individuals to satisfy their primordial need to be able to better understand life and their place in the universe. This importance has helped the Numerology, I Ching, and African divinity to thrive in the face of all odds in the world.

ReferencesTop of FormDeer, T. R., Leong, M. S., & Buvanendran, A. (2013). Comprehensive treatment of chronic pain by medical, interventional, and integrative approaches: The American Academy Of Pain Medicine textbook on patient management. New York, NY: Springer. Eggenberger, S., Grassley, J., & Restrepo, E. (2006). Culturally competent nursing care for families: listening to the voices of Mexican-American women. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 11(3), 1-20.Bottom of Form