Session: Developing Culturally-Sensitive Approaches to Patient Care
Fostering Patient Autonomy by Promoting Justice-focused Agency:Cultural Competence in Caring for Muslim Patients
Saturday, October 14, 2023
9:00 AM – 10:15 AM ET
Location: Kent A-C (Fourth Floor)
Do patients always conceive of their actions through the Western philosophical framework of autonomous, self-determining agency? We challenge this assumption in our presentation about cultural competence skills essential for engaging immigrant Muslim populations in collaborative therapeutic decision-making processes. In Islamic biomedical ethics, acting justly is considered to be a motivating factor at least as important as the upholding of one’s autonomy or the freedom to pursue one’s individual life goals. For many patients with Islamic religious, cultural and ethical commitments, the ability to act on principles of justice may therefore be paramount to the availability of choices or procedures designed with the purposes of fostering their autonomy. After articulating the philosophical basis for "justice-focused" agency promotion, we will identify culturally competent and diversity responsive practices to implement in healthcare systems and individual patient-provider interactions. We will show that healthcare providers working with immigrant Muslim populations may convey respect for cultural and religious differences with more success by promoting agency based in a patient's moral obligations to their social environment than by engaging them in autonomy-fostering interactions. We will demonstrate effective ways of balancing this approach in a clinical setting with Western cultural priorities of encouraging individual self-governance. Since health inequities impacting American Muslims are closely correlated with actual or perceived barriers to accessing healthcare, our approach to improving the interactions between Muslim patients and their healthcare providers may lead to crucial and concrete progress toward higher healthcare utilization by Muslim patient populations.
Sarah Khaleefah – Health and Human Services – University of Michigan - Dearborn