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In a variety of health care settings, nurses are caring for childbearing women and their families from the Amish culture. Accommodations for the Amish can be provided while still giving quality health care for the delivery and care of babies. A person's deeply held cultural religious views can profoundly impact the childbirth experience. This article describes a case study of an Amish family who had to transfer their newborn daughter to a neonatal intensive care unit and a visit to an Amish Birthing Center. Health care professionals working with the Amish must recognize and respect the role that culture plays in the health care practices of this population.
KEY WORDS: Amish; Amish Mutual Networks; Family Roles; Genetics; Prenatal Care; Birthing Center; Home Remedies.
Krieger (2001) usefully urge researchers to pay attention to the complexities of the pattering of health by culture, race, ethnicity and social class, for these patterns put our etiologic understanding to the test. In relation to child bearing, there are over 130,000 Amish in North America with the average Amish family having seven children, more than twice the mean of the America families (www.amish.net, 2002; Carlson, 2001). The Amish have doubled in population in the last decade (Good & Good, 1995). They are a conservative ethnic microcosm of the greater culture surrounding them but it appears that Amish mothers and their babies can utilize medical facilities without compromising their culture and/or religious beliefs. Accommodations for the Amish can be provided while still giving quality health care for the delivery and care of babies. A person's deeply held cultural religious view can profoundly impact the childbirth experience. Therefore, health care professionals working with the Amish must recognize and respect the role that culture plays in the health care practices of this population. This article describes a case study of an Amish family who had to transfer their newborn daughter to a neonatal intensive care unit as well as a family visit to an Amish Birthing Center.
CASE STUDY
The religious and cultural beliefs of the Amish culture have led to variations in health care practices that are different from main stream American culture. The Amish have a health care belief system that includes traditional remedies passed from one generation to the...