Mohamud A. Verjee
Spiritual Interviewing – Responding to Patient Needs and Wishes
Dr. Mohamud A. Verjee, BSc (Hons), MBChB, DRCOG, MBA, CCFP, FCFP
University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar
mohamud.verjee@ucalgary.ca
Spirituality, inherently unique in every person, is frequently overlooked and underrated. What are the patient’s needs and wishes? How do they cope when suffering from ill health? Any consultation should consider the relevance of thoughts, feelings, wellness, and relationships. Rather than an opening line of “What can I do for you today?” a better question mining intrinsic information is, “Before we start, tell me, how do you feel today?” Pluralism is associated with multiple faiths and religious convictions. A patient’s faith is an influential factor when taking a history. Fostering hope for healing and patient-centeredness, including a spiritual element, may place the meaning of illness in a better perspective. Approaching patients in multifaith communities is a learned skill, particularly with mental healthcare issues involving stigma with a reluctance to reveal the true extent of psychiatric problems. Either way, invoking God’s help and accepting His will for outcomes is notable in a traditional Middle Eastern Islamic setting, as in Qatar, a non-secular country. The secular West, predominantly Christian, is more phlegmatic, cultural competence being essential for both settings. Three health systems’ clinical lifetime experiences have elicited distinct differences in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Qatar. Spiritual interviewing rarely happens in medical consultations, more so in psychiatry, and during palliative care up to death. The author discusses approaches to emphasize the benefit and importance of exploring spiritualism as a healing asset in illness for patients in multicultural settings expressing spiritual awareness.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Mohamud A. Verjee, BSc(Hons), MBChB, MBA, DRCOG, CCFP, FCFP, is a practicing family physician. He is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine, the Assistant Dean for Medical Student Affairs, and a Co-Director of the Primary Care Clerkship at Weill Cornell Medicine - Qatar. He studied biochemistry and then medicine at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He first taught medical students at Oxford University, England in 1990. Migrating to Canada in 1994, he spent several years in rural practice in Alberta, Canada. Joining the University of Calgary, he established a career in academic medicine and was appointed the Family Medicine Clerkship Director. In 2016, he completed his MBA (Leadership & Sustainability). Now an alumnus of the Harvard Macy Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, he has presented at TEDx. His clinical interests include interprofessional education, communication skills, and narrative medicine. He is a keen musician, learns history from the study of Islamic coins, and still enjoys a game of squash.