Nursing in Islam
In Islam, nurses provide healthcare services to patients, families and communities as a manifestation of love for Allah and Muhammad. The nursing profession is not new to Islam. Islamic traditions include sympathy for and responsibility toward those in need.[1]This perspective had emerged during the development of Islam as a religion, culture, and civilization.
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Ethos of health care service[edit]
In Islamic traditions, caring is the manifestation of love for Allah and Muhammad.[1] Caring in Islam, however, is more than the act of empathy; instead, it consists of being responsible for, sensitive to, and concerned with those in need, namely the weak, the suffering and the outcasts of society.[1] This act of caring is further divided into three principles: intention, thought, and action.[1] Intention and thought refer to who, what, where, when and why to care, whereas action is related to the knowledge necessary to be able to care.[1] In short, health care is deemed as service to the patients and to Allah, as opposed to other professions that are commercial-based.[1] This ethos was the fundamental motivating factor for the majority of the doctors and nurses in the history of Islam.[1]
Approach to health care service[edit]
Another aspect of Islamic health care service that distinguishes it from the contemporary Western health care industry is the holistic approach to health and wellbeing taken.[1] This holistic approach consists of both treating the organic basis of the ailments and providing spiritual support for the patient.[1] This spiritual component comes in the form of Tawheed (Oneness of Allah), a dimension lacking in current Western models of nursing and, thus, could pose as a challenge for application of this model of nursing to Muslim patients as it does not meet their holistic needs.[1]
First Muslim nurse[edit]
The first professional nurse in the history of Islam is a woman named Rufaidah bint Sa’ad, from the Bani Aslam tribe in Medina.[2] She lived at the time of Muhammed and was among the first people in Medina to accept Islam.[2] Rufaidah received her training and knowledge in medicine from her father, a physician, whom she assisted regularly.[2] After the Muslim state was established in Medina, she would treat the ill in her tent set up outside the mosque.[3] During times of war, she would lead a group of volunteers to the battlefield and would treat casualties and injured soldiers.[3]
Rufaidah is described as a woman possessing the qualities of an ideal nurse: compassionate, empathetic, a good leader and a great teacher, passing on her clinical knowledge to others she trained.[2] Furthermore, Rufaidah’s activities as someone greatly involved in the community, and in helping those at the more disadvantaged portions of society,[2] epitomize the ethos of care identified above.
Nursing in hospitals[edit]
In hospitals built in the Medieval Muslim society male nurses tended to male patients and female nurses to female patients.[4] The hospital in Al-Qayrawan (Kairouan in English) was especially unique among Muslim hospitals for several reasons. Built in 830 by the order of the Prince Ziyadat Allah I of Ifriqiya (817–838), the Al-Dimnah Hospital, constructed in the Dimnah region close to the great mosque of Al Qayrawan, was quite ahead of its time.[5] It had the innovation of having a waiting area for visitors, not to mention that the first official female nurses were hired from Sudan to work in this hospital.[5] Moreover, aside from regular physicians working there, a group of religious imams who also practiced medicine, called Fugaha al-Badan,[5] provided service as well, likely by tending the patients’ spiritual needs.
References[edit]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j G. Hussein, Rassool, (2000), "The crescent and Islam: healing, nursing and the spiritual dimension. Some considerations towards an understanding of the Islamic perspectives on caring", Journal of Advanced Nursing, 32 (6): 1476–1484, doi:10.1046/j.1365-2648.2000.01614.x
- ^ a b c d e Kasule, Omar Hasan Sr. (November 1998) 9811 - Historical Roots of the Nursing Profession in Islam Islamic Medical Education Resources, retrieved January 3, 2012
- ^ a b Kasule, Omar Hasan Sr. (2008-05-17) Historical Roots of the Nursing Profession in Islam Islamic Medicines Forum, retrieved April 26, 2010
- ^ Syed, Ibrahim B. Efficient Hospitals: Islamic Medicine’s Contribution to Modern Medicine The Imam Reza Website, retrieved April 26, 2010
- ^ a b c Zaimeche, Salah (September 2004) Al-Qayrawan (Tunisia) Foundation for Science Technology and Civilization, retrieved April 26, 2010