Source: www.nytimes.com
MERCED, CALIFORNIA, September 20, 2009: At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than IV drips, syringes and blood glucose monitors. Because many Hmong rely on their spiritual beliefs to get them through illnesses, the hospital’s new Hmong shaman policy, the country’s first, formally recognizes the cultural role of traditional healers like Va Meng Lee, a Hmong shaman, inviting them to perform nine approved ceremonies in the hospital, including “soul calling” and chanting in a soft voice.
The policy and a novel training program to introduce shamans to the principles of Western medicine are part of a national movement to consider patients’ cultural beliefs and values when deciding their medical treatment. The approach is being adopted by dozens of medical institutions and clinics across the country that cater to immigrant, refugee and ethnic-minority populations.
Certified shamans have the same unrestricted access to patients given to clergy members.
A recent survey of 60 hospitals in the United States by the Joint Commission, the country’s largest hospital accrediting group, found that the hospitals were increasingly embracing cultural beliefs, driven sometimes by marketing, whether by adding calcium- and iron-rich Korean seaweed soup to the maternity ward menu at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, or providing birthing doulas for Somali women in Minneapolis.
In Merced, about 120 miles southeast of San Francisco, the Mercy hospital shaman program was designed to strengthen the trust between doctors and the Hmong community. It tries to redress years of misunderstanding between the medical establishment and the Hmong, whose lives in the mountains of Laos were irreparably altered by the Vietnam War.