South Asian Cultural Group’s Funeral Practices and Rituals
Discuss about the Nursing Grief and Crisis Management.
Cultural perspective is the major factor that shapes the reaction of the people towards bereavement experience. Many people deal with death as well as trauma and cultural interventions. According to Glenn (2016), religion plays a significant role in the traumatic situations. Many people become unaware of the position on religion until they face any loss. People start believing in their religion when they face such losses in life (Neimeyer, Klass & Dennis, 2014). The expression of grief or loss is different in diverse cultural background. The study will discuss the cultural norm of South Asia Indian cultural group in expressing their grief and loss. The practices, customs, and rituals are quite different to the other cultural group. The study will describe the code of ethics for Nurses in Australia to understand the diversity values.
South Asian Cultural group belong to some of the countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The study specifically focusing on the Indian cultural group in dealing with deaths and grieves (Neimeyer, Klass & Dennis, 2014). Indian people follow various types of rituals and cultural norms for funeral of a death person. Majority of the people in India are Hindu and they follow the Hinduism cultural norms for completing the funeral process (Irish, Lundquist & Nelsen 2014). It is to be indicated that the Death and Burial Customs in Hinduism culture offers a process that comforts the grieving of the family by honoring the person who is dead. It is a well-known fact that Hinduism upholds the beliefs of reincarnation after completing the cycles of life. Hindus believe that Karma affects the practices and tones of mourning rituals (Currier et al., 2013). Therefore, it is important to create a positive atmosphere for the mourning family. The family passes on the merits of good karma for preparing a positive rebirth for their loved ones. The Hindu members provide prayers, supports, and mantras for honoring the person and comfort to the person.
Hindus have a string belief in reincarnation. It is perceived that when a person dies, their soul moves from the one body to another on the path to reach heaven. The priest and the family member come to pray with the dying person (Thieleman, 2015). They read holy texts and sing holy songs. The priest then performs the last rites. Soon after death, the family will pray around the body. In some of the cases, people try to avoid touching it since it is considered as unclean. The funeral process starts with cleaning the deceased body and dressing it in white traditional clothing. It is ritual of dressing a wife in red if she dies before her husband. The procession passes the places that were important to the deceased (Thefuneralsource.org, 2017). People enchant the prayers when the body is entering to the crematorium. The body is decorated with flowers and sandalwood while someone even reads from scriptures. The male person or the eldest son is the main mourner that will pray for the soul of the body.
Code of Ethics for Nurses in Australia
Neimeyer, Klass and Dennis (2014) described that Hindus believe in burning the bodies after death since it releases the spirits. The flames extracted from this burning body are considered as the creator Brahma. The priest performs the role of purifying the home with spices and incense. When the friends and relatives visit the family members, the mourning period begins. The funeral mourners must need to wash and change their clothes before they enter to the house (Aub.edu.lb, 2017). After one year, the family again arranges Shradh to free the soul of the dead person and bid a final goodbye. Muslims and Christians in India follow the different procedures for their funeral rituals. It is even appropriate to visit the home for showing respects to the deceased and their soul. The family stays in a state of extreme ritual impurity during this period. Along with this, they even need to maintain some of the strict rules for a while.
The Code of Ethics for nurses in Australia is developed for improving the nursing profession in Australia. These codes of ethics for nurses are described further.
- Nurses have to value the quality nursing care for each individual.
- Nurses have to be respectful and kind to both self and others.
- Nurses value the cultural diversity of the people (Pitt et al., 2013).
- Nurses value the proper access to quality health care and nursing care for all people.
- Nurses value the proper and informed decision making process.
- Nurses value the management of information in an ethical way.
- Nurses value a culture safety in the health care centre.
- Nurses need to promote a socially, ecologically, and economically sustainable environment.
The value statement describes the value of the diversity of people who require proper appreciation for the people who are from different cultural background (Zahedi et al., 2013). These eight codes of ethics are accompanied by four major categories that are described further.
According to Epstein and Turner (2015), it is necessary to acknowledge one’s culture to value the diversity. The nurses have to recognize and value the own identity along with the experience for promoting a diversified culture at the health care scenario. The values, belief, perceptions, and attitudes are needed to be taken into consideration. In case of Indian culture, the nurses provide the extra care when it comes to religious concerns (Stephens & Brighton, 2014). They find the emotions when a person is dying and they provide similar condolence to the family members.
It is necessary to acknowledge and respond to each person for valuing diversity. The nurses need to develop the unique cultural knowledge and awareness to respond in a significant way. The nurses need to learn proper language to communicate with the family member of the service users (Pitt et al., 2013). During a health care encounter, the cultural communication describes the proper care for the service users and their families.
Nurses accept and value the diversity at their workplace. They usually acknowledge the colleagues from the different cultural background (Epstein & Turner, 2015). Accordingly, they respond towards the need for inter-professional and non-discriminatory interpersonal relationship among the colleagues. The nurses even respect each other’s skills, knowledge, and experiences (Bowden, 2015). They value each other like the precious resources that are essential for improving the health care quality. Indian culture is much concerned about the respectful attitudes and proper condolence for the family who lost someone during the treatment.
Conclusion
The nurses need to identify and accept the diversity of people in the community. It is noted that people from different community live their lives much as per their choices and preferences. The nurses need to derive knowledge about the different cultural values, practices, and experiences. It is necessary for the nurses to eliminate disparities in health and nursing care. Nurses usually work to reduce the adverse effects and prejudicial attitudes. Promoting the quality health care practices helps in strengthening the reputed position of the health care centre.
When a person is dying, the family members usually face the losses and grieve. It is quite clear that people from different cultural background express their mourning in a different manner. Especially, in Indian culture, it is noticed that the family members become out of control while expressing their emotions. The nursing practices promote the right attitudes for the people who face such losses and grief. The nurses have to keep much patience to handle such emotional environment. The emotional grievance sometimes makes the people weak. Especially, when a person is dying, it becomes very difficult to deal with the family members of the patients. In order to promote the good quality of nursing care, it is necessary for the nurses to control their emotional state of minds.
Conclusion
Nurses need to promote the quality care services for the health care systems. In particular form, the nurses are aware of the fact that people should not be harmed due to the differences in their language and cultural aspects. When a person dies, it generates the emotions among each individual. Be it a different cultural people, everyone feels some sort of grievance and emotions due to the loss. The nursing care should promote the quality care for the family members of the patient who has died. In different countries, the rituals, customs, and practices are different to each other. Especially, in terms of the religious aspects, people maintain different traditional customs to provide proper honor to the dead body. Hence, the study explores the funeral process maintains by the people in India. People from Hinduism religion pass through some of the significant procedures to make the soul feel comfortable. On the other hand, promoting the nursing care to maintain cultural diversity is essential. The proper nursing codes of ethics are also needed to be maintained for promoting the quality nursing care in a significant way.
References
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Thefuneralsource.org. (2017). Hinduism Funeral Traditions- Religious Traditions: The Funeral Source. [online] Available at: https://thefuneralsource.org/trad0204.html [Accessed 24 Feb. 2017].
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