New partnership is expanding culturally responsive care for Muslim patients

A year ago, Open Path Resources and Hennepin Healthcare partnered to place qibla stickers in Emergency Department rooms, so Muslim patients would know the direction to face for prayer.

A young woman suffering from depression and chemical addiction came to Hennepin Healthcare for care and asked Spiritual Care Provider Shukri Salah for help. The daughter wanted to go back to live with her family, but her mother was saying no—she’d had too many chances.

The daughter told Shukri, “If I don’t get back into my family, I don’t want to live.” The mother told Shukri, “I have to push her away.”

“Culturally our community thinks that when a person goes to a mental hospital or is taking medication for mental illness, that they are done and there will be no recovery,” Shukri says.

Shukri spoke to the mother about the hope that treatment could offer and then mediated a compromise—if the daughter stayed on medication and went to a group home first, she would have another chance to live with her family.

Shukri is part of an innovative new Hennepin Healthcare program that partners with a local nonprofit, Open Path Resources, to deepen the culturally responsive care we offer to Muslim psychiatric patients. Shukri and her fellow Spiritual Care Advisor, Imam Abdulrahman “Abuturab” Hashi, offer spiritual care to Muslim patients but their role goes far beyond that. They also spend time with Muslim inpatients in the psychiatric units, and support staff as they form a care plan for patients, participate in the discharge process, and provide community-based support to discharged patients and their families.

Read the full article on HENNEPIN HEALTHCARE