Between Service and Healing: Find More Meaning by Nurturing Hope

As-salamu alaykum,

Last week, we started a conversation about taking specific cues from the manners of Prophet Muhammad PBUH to up our game in our healthcare work.

This is one way for us to rekindle our connection with him and commemorate his impactful life while living those values everyday to grow, add more meaning to the connections we make in our healthcare work and improve our emotional and mental resilience as well as impact along the way.

We have been blessed with this unique opportunity to serve patients and their families in their oftentimes, most vulnerable situations in their lives - sick, sometimes, broken and even disheveled.

In our bid to set them on a path of healing (which ultimately comes from Allah, the Most High), it's important that we turn to yet another beautiful trait of our beloved Prophet Muhammad PBUH - He nurtured hope.   

Let’s take a cue from some Quranic and prophetic wisdoms that Allah, the Most High,  and His beloved Prophet Muhammad PBUH have taught us.

The Quran Calls Us to Be Hopeful

The last verse of Surah Al-Baqarah begins with a hopeful message that should speak to us as much as inform our approach to those at the center of our service in healthcare work;

“Allah does not burden any soul with more than it can bear.”   [Quran 2:286]

The responsibility that we shoulder can seem untenable at times not until we are reminded about this reality of the tests that Allah, the Most Merciful, places on us - the guarantee inherent in this message that “we can handle it” and this in turn means that we can share the spirit of this verse in creative ways with those we serve in healthcare be they Muslims or otherwise.

Prophet Muhammad PBUH often highlighted the positive even in dire situations

In the following hadith, Prophet Muhammad PBUH highlighted the silver lining inherent in the trial of illness and similar tests from Allah;

“Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri and Abu Huraira narrated that the Prophet PBUH said, "No fatigue, nor disease, nor sorrow, nor sadness, nor hurt, nor distress befalls a Muslim, even if it were the prick he receives from a thorn, but that Allah expiates some of his sins for that."” [Sahih Al-Bukhari 5641, 5642]

While the relevance of this verse to the broader patient community that we serve can be debated, the hopeful perspective and shift in the overall outlook for a patient suffering can not be denied when hope is nurtured.

Conversations around Hope in Patient Care

Patients are at the center of everything we do in Healthcare. The clinicians in our healthcare community are uniquely positioned to support the patient journey and experience of care as modern research has drawn our attention to even more closely.

Deirdre Mylod, PhD and Thomas H. Lee, MD, MSc in their paper “Giving Hope as a High Reliability Function of Health Care” from the Journal of Patient Experience shared these insights from their quality research and conversations with some of our colleagues around the subject of hope and hopelessness in patient care;

 “There's always hope,” they often say. “The question is what we are hoping for?”

“Early on, we hope for a cure,” they continue. “And when that is impossible, we hope for as much good time as possible. And then, at a later point, we hope for relief from suffering. And then, in everyone's life, we reach a time when we are hoping for a death with dignity.”

Then clinicians hasten to add, “We are nowhere near that phase—but let's focus on today, and what we should be hoping for right now.”

As Muslim healthcare workers and specifically clinicians in the space, we can find more meaning in our work, improve our emotional and mental resilience by helping patients and their families find realistic hope in challenging situations consistent with the Quran and the Sunnah of our beloved Prophet Muhammad PBUH.

Deirdre Mylod, PhD and Thomas H. Lee, MD, MSc in their paper “Giving Hope as a High Reliability Function of Health Care” recommend three practical steps to build this into your engagements with patients and their families;

1. Take the time to help patients and their families identify realistic goals of care consistent with their values

2. Explicitly convey your intent and ability to help them achieve their goals

3. Co-create realistic pathways to build forward with the intention to foster hope and improve patient (and family) confidence of the potential to achieve meaningful positive future state (even when cure is not attainable).

The impact of your effort - laced with Ihsan (excellence) in this hopeful direction has ramifications for the patient experience of care, the potential for a positive outcome as well as your sense of gratification that translates to meaningful work.

Meaning in our work that is aligned with our Islamic values and Muslim identity only reinforces the work-life integration that makes us more resilient and burnout-proof in our healthcare work lives and beyond.

Consider, incorporating this intention into your current workflow if you don’t already do so intent and experience the transformative power of Hope in human connections and the drive towards positive action.

May Allah, the Most High, continue to enable you and I to be people who nurture hope in our healthcare interactions and beyond. Amin 

Sincerely,

Sulyman

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