Dr Abu Bakr is a member of the Sufi Muslim community in Broken Hill.(ABC Broken Hill: Grace Atta)
Dr Abu Bakr isn’t a medical doctor, but several times a year, he runs a workshop for Australia’s next generation of health professionals.
In his sessions, he discusses how to provide culturally appropriate health care to Muslim patients, and talks about the role of spirituality in the sector more broadly.
It’s part of a higher education program that’s been operating since 2018, where an outback university has collaborated with its local Muslim community
“Can a male health professional treat a Muslim woman?”
It’s a question that Dr Abu Bakr Sirajuddin Cook, a Sufi Muslim himself, says he’s been asked countless times by health and medical students.
And he encourages their curiosity.
“If it’s a matter of life and the preservation of life those other concerns shouldn’t arise at all,” Dr Abu Bakr said.
“If it’s in terms of general health check-ups then people will always have their own personal preference.
“The key takeaway is … be curious and ask meaningful questions.”
Dr Abu Bakr isn’t a medical doctor, but several times a year, he runs a workshop for Australia’s next generation of health professionals.
In his sessions, he discusses how to provide culturally appropriate health care to Muslim patients, and talks about the role of spirituality in the sector more broadly.
It’s part of a higher education program that’s been operating since 2018, where an outback university has collaborated with its local Muslim community.
Holistic healthcare in the outback
Medical students from all around Australia take a placement through Broken Hill’s University Department of Rural Health (UDRH).
As part of this placement, students participate in the ENRICH program, which aims to give them a holistic understanding of health care and the diverse community they will be serving.
It’s this program that instigated the collaboration between the university and Broken Hill’s Almiraj Sufi and Islamic Study Centre.
As a current research fellow with the Sufi centre, with a doctorate in philosophy, Dr Abu Bakr says he was pleased to see the university take an interest in the topic.
“I think the University Department of Rural Health needs to be commended for going to practitioners of the faith,” he said.
“It gives the sessions authenticity, which I think is really important not only for the students and their learning outcomes but also for the communities that are being represented.”
You can ask that
Dr Abu Bakr tells the July cohort of health students, who sit before him on the underground level of the Sufi centre: “Ask me anything at all. I’m encouraging you to challenge me.”
He delivers an overview of the five pillars of the Islamic faith and how they may intersect with the students’ health practice, including being conscious of the direction towards Mecca and various periods of fasting.
The rest of the session was, by design, dedicated to question time.
And there were plenty.
The students asked questions about fasting, prayer, diet, and how to manage a patient’s refusal of certain medical care.
Dr Abu Bakr’s answers to these questions were often quite simple.
“The foundational thing is that the preservation of life comes first,” he said.
“Ask them, ‘What would you accept? What would help you?'”
When the session came to an end, Dr Abu Bakr challenged the students with a question of his own.
“Why do you think we spent so much time on getting you to ask me questions?”
While there were a few guesses among long pauses, Dr Abu Bakr gave them an answer.
“If you can’t in a safe space ask me about my faith and how it would impact my reception of health care, how are you going to ask any of your patients?”
“This is not just about Islam, it’s about anyone’s spirituality. Even as Muslims, we will have different aspects of our practice. So, what goes for me, may not necessarily go for any other Muslim that you come across.
“So, it’s really important you become comfortable asking questions.”
Cultural competency can make all the difference
Melissa Bloomer, a professor in critical care nursing with more than 30 years’ experience in the sector, says she can recall quite a few instances when health professionals were ignorant of their patient’s potential cultural needs.
But one incident, involving a critically ill male patient of Muslim faith, stands out to her.
“He needed a breathing tube and to secure the tube a clinician decided to shave his beard, which enabled us to more properly secure it,” she said.
“But this gentlemen’s beard was not just about his preference for facial hair, it was actually strongly linked to his religion and his culture.
“And so, to remove his beard without seeking permission was very traumatic for that patient and that family.”
Professor Bloomer says having a simple conversation with the family could have saved everyone a lot of heartache.
“I understand the intent of the clinician, which was to secure the tube in the optimal way, but taking a moment to seek permission from a family member and explain why it might be necessary would have been a much better approach,” she said.
Professor Bloomer says incidents like these can have an impact on health outcomes for patients.
“Depending on how severe the experience is, it may lead the person to not access care again in the future, or delay seeking help because of the fear that their cultural needs will not be addressed.”
On the other side of it, Professor Bloomer also recalls a time where culturally sensitive care hugely benefited the family of a dying neonatal patient.
She recalls that the neonatal patient’s Muslim parents requested their baby be bathed in holy water.
Professor Bloomer admits that out of context a request to bathe a child in outside water would normally be rejected for fears around sterility.
But when the clinicians were told about the cultural significance it had for the family, she says they did it “without batting an eye”.
“Because they understood the importance of doing it for the parents of the neonate that was dying.
“In essence it may not have made any difference to the care of the neonate, but it would have made a huge difference to the parents who left that neonatal intensive care knowing they’ve done everything they can for their child in this life.”
‘There’s no one size fits all’
The Sufi centre is filled with Islamic texts and even has its own bookshop.(ABC Broken Hill: Grace Atta)
Professor Bloomer says while it can be helpful to keep a few key ideas in mind when treating Muslim patients, ultimately everyone is different.
“I generally would expect that they might have preferences around the gender of the care providers,” she said.
“If a woman in her healthy state might prefer to cover her hair, then there are very few reasons in a clinical setting that we can’t accommodate that.
“[But] what became obvious to me as a clinician was that there’s no ‘one size fits all’ in terms of how we care for people.”
Professor Bloomer says she strongly agrees with the sentiment taught in Dr Abu Bakr’s regional classroom.
“We should be encouraging clinicians to be open and to approach every single patient, irrespective of what they’ve assumed about their culture or their religion, and ask what’s important to the person.”
An ‘eye-opening’ experience
Emily Sharp is one of the students who took part in the recent cultural training session with Dr Abu Bakr.
She admits that prior to the session, she’d “had very little interaction with the faith”.
But said she was eager to learn.
“I wanted to know how I should approach my nursing care with [Muslim patients].”
“It just opened my eyes and [gave me] that understanding to then be able to better help my patients … previously I would not have been able to ask questions or know how to guide them through their time in hospital.”
Fellow student Emily McIntyre says she’s had moments in the past when she’s been unsure of how to best care for diverse patients.
“In Sydney there’s lots of different religions and cultures and I haven’t really understood properly before how to engage with those clients,” she said.
“So, this will definitely help with that.”
Social-work student Natalie Berry says, ultimately, courses like this one help break down stereotypes people might hold about the Muslim community.
“I think Islam is one of those religions where there’s a lot of misconceptions about what it is, especially in a country like Australia where the Muslim community are a minority.
“So, it’s just good to get a better understanding of it, and that there’s so much diversity in it.
“You know, faith is quite a big part of people’s lives, so it’s good to use that as a strength [in health care] because it improves people’s wellbeing.”
As Dr Abu Bakr says, “We’re not just flesh and bone. We have a spirit.”
“And being able to connect with someone on a spiritual level is important for the provision of health care because it can make them more accepting and open to [receiving it], which results in better healthcare outcomes.”
Source ABC Broken Hill
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