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Practice of Nursing Care Provided to Clients from Muslim Countries in the Czech Republic

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Abstract

Authors deal with practice of nursing care provided to Muslim clients in the Czech Republic. They use the explorative research design. By means of analyses of 21 semi-structured interviews with important social actors in the area of health care (spa resorts and hospitals). The study shows that Muslims are not homogeneous in their behaviour in the field of health care. In the spa environment, three interpretation perspectives can be found: the economic interpretation of a Muslim as the source of income of the Czech spa industry, which faces economic problems, the cultural interpretation developed within the spas (the experience capital of the staff and other clients), and the (a) cultural interpretation of Muslims and Islam brought to spas from the outside (the public opinion). However, in the area of hospitals, Muslims are not separated from the remaining categories of students; Muslim patients represent a small group of persons, and their treatment being conditioned by the distance or closeness of cultures, language skills, adaptation, and experiences with treatment in the Czech environment as perceived by the staff.

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Notes

  1. The text was supported by the “Islam in the Czech Republic: The Establishment of Muslims in the Public Space” project, which is implemented within the Program of Security Research in the Czech Republic for the years 2010–2015 (VG20132015113).

  2. For example, the situation in the Czech spa town of Teplice, when people repeatedly complained about the noise and behaviour of Muslims staying in the local Šanovský park. In protest, these critics organised an event of collective walking of dogs in that park. As the date of the event, they chose the day when Muslims celebrated the end of Ramadan in the park (Dvořák 2015).

  3. As Topinka estimates (2015), 22,000 Muslims lived in our country as at 31 December 2013. These data indicate a “potential” number of Muslims, not the extent, to which they practice their religion or claim allegiance to Islam (Topinka 2015: 34, 35).

  4. See Berger (1990), Luckmann (1967 in Černín 2010).

  5. Visas for stays lasting for max. 90 days, referred to as “short-term visas”, are visas valid for one or several entries and entitle their holders to stay on the territory of the Schengen Area for the time specified in the visas, where the duration of an uninterrupted stay and the total duration of successive stays on the territory of the Schengen Area must not exceed 90 days during each 180 days. Such visas are granted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and an application for the extension of the duration of a stay on the territory under a short-term visa is filed to the Immigration Police departments.

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Correspondence to Tomáš Janků.

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Janků, T., Linhartová, L. & Topinka, D. Practice of Nursing Care Provided to Clients from Muslim Countries in the Czech Republic. J Relig Health 56, 1658–1669 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-016-0273-0

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