Medical institutions have evolved due to help from the Roman Catholic Religion. Leaders, specifically nuns, set precedents for how medical facilities should care for their patients. Religious groups set their focus on helping the sick. Most nonreligious people would outcast the sick. The bible tells us that God looked after the sick (Matthew 25:34-40). Roman Catholics strive to act like God in the best way they can. They thought we must not ignore the sick, but help them. Therefore, the nuns voluntarily helped poor people that were sick, without expecting anything in return. When you think of a hospital, you think of sick people, but the medical facilities ran by Catholics did more than help the sick. They cared for single mothers and children. They fed the hungry and clothed the poor. Any hospitality that one needed, they were happy to help (nursing.upenn.edu). When these religious groups came to America, they set up institutions to provide their services, which we now know today as hospitals.
The issue we have at hand here is that with the further separation of Church and state in the United States, hospitals have taken a turn and are now more readily under the supervision of the public. The focus of most medical centers is primarily monetary profit. If you are uninsured or underinsured, you most likely cannot walk into your local hospital and receive care. Hospital bills during this day and age are extremely unaffordable without insurance, which on its own, is also expensive. Therefore, many people just suffer with their illnesses. The values modeled by Roman Catholics in medicine are starting to decline.
In this paper, I will discuss the role the Roman Catholic took in medical institutions, the ways in which they sustain their identity in the medical setting today, and how medicine has changed since the public/government took leadership over most medical facilities. To do this, I analyzed 3 source and will use them to support my claims.
Many women practiced medicine throughout their towns/villages. Most of their healing was through faith and prayer. They would start to prepare a person’s soul for the meeting of God. In 1727, the French sisters of Ursuline were the first to arrive to America. Years after that, many other sisters from different countries arrived as well. They performed ministries of teaching and nursing. Hospitals arose as needed such as times of war and disaster, but they were usually temporary until the late 1700s. These hospitals had staff that was made up of mostly sisters, but they were overseen by a priest. As for the care they performed, it was mostly hands-off because they had many rules they had to follow regarding how they could touch patients. For example, sisters would deliver meals and medications. Spiritually, sisters would perform prayers and rituals. As advancements were made in science and technology, women working as nurses could further their education of medicine to provide better care for their patients (Catholic Hospitals in American Healthcare).
Today the role of sisters has changed, as well as the number of sisters in the medical industry has decreased. Members of the laity now take on the jobs that were once done by sisters. Therefore, the mission of the Roman Catholic Church is still carried out. Sister Roch said, “Now our focus has changed. We have established the institutions to go forward and are keeping them sponsored so that they are true to who we are, why we are and how we are” (osv.com). As of 2011, Catholic care hospitals account for 1 in 9 hospital beds in the United States (Pro Publica). But what exactly makes a healthcare institution Catholic? Catholic health care facilities have the goal of helping the underserved; those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to receive care. They provide “pastoral care” and “mission-related services” that wouldn’t usually be provided due to poor reimbursement from the government or other public sources (covenanthealth.net).
For medical facilities that are not ran by Catholic leaders, they are much different. Of the 5,724 hospitals in the US, about 630 are Catholic. It is difficult for the Catholic institutions to compete due to health insurance plans such as Medicare and Medicaid. In addition, as nuns retire from their leadership positions in hospitals, they are usually replaced by non-Catholic leaders (huffingtonpost). The fact that Catholic ran hospitals are declining has both pros and cons. For example, Catholic hospitals are usually in poorer areas for that people who are in need can receive deserved healthcare service. On the negative ends of things, Catholic hospitals refuse to prescribe certain medications or perform certain procedures that go against their religious beliefs. For example, Jennafer Norris experienced life-threatening conditions during her two previous pregnancies. She used birth control in the form of a IUD, but when that failed and she got pregnant again, her health started declining once again. After her emergency C-section, she asked her doctor to tie her tubes. Since it was a Catholic hospital, the doctor refused (nytimes.com). If Jennafer had gone to a non-Catholic hospital, the medical professionals could have granted her wishes. Clearly Catholic and non-Catholic hospitals have different rules and procedures that they must follow. The beliefs of the different institutions can be seen as good or bad depending on the patient’s own thoughts on the matter at hand.