Abstract
Studies show that there are patients who refuse treatment or demand that treatment be provided by a professional belonging to their ethnic group. We investigated whether patients have preferences for nationality and religion of nurses (PFNR), and which factors impact these preferences. The study included 1012 Jews and Arabs. Results show that Arabs and Jews prefer that a nurse of their own nationality and religion treat them. Trust is the most important factor that influences this preference. In the Israeli healthcare system, the patient-nurse encounter is affected by the strong bias that Jews and Arab Muslims hold against each other.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ahmed, M. I. (2022). Muslim-Jewish harmony: A politically contingent reality. Religions, 13(6), 535.
Al-Atawneh, M., & Ali, N. (2018). Islam in Israel: Muslim communities in non-Muslim states. Cambridge University Press.
Albougami, A. S., Pounds, K. G., & Alotaibi, J. S. (2016). Comparison of four cultural competence models in transcultural nursing A discussion paper. International Archives of Nursing and Health Care, 2(4), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.23937/2469-5823/1510053
Bogardus, E. S. (1933). A social distance scale. Sociology & Social Research, 77, 265–271.
Christ, O., & Kauff, M. (2019). Intergroup contact theory. In K. Sassenberg & M. L. W. Vliek (Eds.), Social Psychology in Action: Evidence-Based Interventions from Theory to Practice (pp. 145–161). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13788-5_10
Crits-Christoph, P., Rieger, A., Gaines, A., & Connolly Gibbons, M. B. (2019). Trust and respect in the patient-clinician relationship: Preliminary development of a new scale. BMC Psychology, 7, 91. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0347-3
Daoud, S. A. O. (2024). Between religion and politics: The case of the Islamic Movement in Israel. Religions, 15(1), 110.
Degrie, L., Gastmans, C., Mahieu, L., Dierckx de Casterlé, B., & Denier, Y. (2017). How do ethnic minority patients experience the intercultural care encounter in hospitals? a systematic review of qualitative research. BMC Medical Ethics., 18(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-016-0163-8
Elias, B. (2018). To seek or not to seek: Examining health-seeking behaviors among Ethiopian immigrants in the United States. Duke University. https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16022
Ethington, P. J. (1997). The intellectual construction of “social distance”: Toward a recovery of Georg Simmel’s social geometry. Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography. https://doi.org/10.4000/cybergeo.227
Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. (2023). Religion and self-definition of extent of religiosity. Society in Israel, Report No. 10. https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/mediarelease/ doclib/2018/195/32_18_195b.pdf.
Keshet, Y., & Popper-Giveon, A. (2017). Neutrality in medicine and health professionals from ethnic minority groups: The case of Arab health professionals in Israel. Social Science and Medicine, 174, 35–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.12.019
Keshet, Y., & Popper-Giveon, A. (2018). Race-based experiences of ethnic minority health professionals: Arab physicians and nurses in Israeli public healthcare organizations. Ethnicity and Health, 23(4), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2017.1280131
Keshet, Y., Popper-Giveon, A., & Liberman, I. (2015). Intersectionality and underrepresentation among health care workforce: The case of Arab physicians in Israel. Israel Journal of Health Policy Research, 4(1), 18–31. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13584-015-0004-0
Keshet, Y. (2019). Ethnic discordance: Why do some patients prefer to be treated by physicians from other ethnic groups? Social Science and Medicine, 235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112358
Khullar, D. (2019). Building trust in health care—Why, where, and how. Journal of American Medical Association, 322(6), 507. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2019.4892
Lee, T. H., McGlynn, E. A., & Safran, D. G. (2019). A framework for increasing trust between patients and the organizations that care for them. Journal of American Medical Association, 321(6), 539–540. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.19186
Meler, T. (2015). I do what I please, but even so, I see a psychologist, Palestinian divorced and widowed mothers in Israel. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 11(3), 306–324.
Mellor, N. (2017). Islamizing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: The case of the Muslim Brotherhood. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 44(4), 513–528.
Noyce, R., & Simpson, J. (2018). The experience of forming a therapeutic relationship from the client’s perspective: A metasynthesis. Psychotherapy Research, 28(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2016.1208373
Orr, Z., & Fleming, M. D. (2023). Medical neutrality and structural competency in conflict zones: Israeli Healthcare professionals’ reaction to political violence. Global Public Health, 18(1), 2171087.
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2011). When groups meet: The dynamics of intergroup contact. Psychology Press.
Peucker, M., & Smith, D. (2019). Not a monolithic movement: The diverse and shifting messaging of Australia’s far-right. In M. Peucker & D. Smith (Eds.), The far-right in contemporary Australia (pp. 73–100). Palgrave.
Pinchas-Mizrachi, R., Zalcman, B. G., & Daoud, N. (2020). Trust in the Israeli Healthcare System Among Arabs, Jewish Immigrants, and Non-immigrants. International Journal Behavior Medicine, 27, 647–659. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-020-09902-8
Popper-Giveon, A. (2019). Preferring patient–physician concordance: The ambiguity of implicit ethnic bias. Ethnicity and Health, 26(7), 1065–1081. https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2019.1620180
Popper-Giveon, A. (2021). Preferring patient–physician concordance: The ambiguity of implicit ethnic bias. Ethnicity & Health, 26(7), 1065–1081. https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2019.1620180
Popper-Giveon, A., & Keshet, Y. (2016). “It’s every family’s dream”: Choice of a medical career among the Arab minority in Israel. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 18, 1148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-015-0252-7
Popper-Giveon, A., Velan, B., & Keshet, Y. (2018). Co** with ethnic tension in health organizations: Policy required. Study of the Organization and Human Resource Quarterly, 3(1), 58–70.
Radwin, L. E., & Cabral, H. J. (2010). Trust in Nurses Scale: Construct validity and internal reliability evaluation. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 66(3), 683–689. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2009.05168.x
Rassool, G. H. (2014). Putting cultural competence all together: Some considerations in caring for Muslim patients. In G. H. Rassool (Ed.), Cultural competence in caring for Muslim patients. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Reisner, R.P. (2020) “Don’t worry, in the end there will be peace;” Relations between therapist-patient of two nations.” Bein Hamilim, 17 [Hebrew]
Shalev, G. (2015). A doctor’s testimony: Medical neutrality and the visibility of Palestinian grievances in Jewish-Israeli publics. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 40(2), 242–262. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-015-9470-7
Sharabi, M. (2014). The relative centrality of life domains among Jews and Arabs in Israel: The effect of culture, ethnicity, and demographic variables. Community, Work, and Family, 17(2), 219–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2014.889660
Shiovitz-Ezra, S. (2016). Antecedents of late life outcomes: The case of Israel. European Journal of Aging, 13(4), 281–285. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-016-0402-3
Smooha, S. (2010). Arab-Jewish relations in Israel: Alienation and rapprochement. U. S. Institute of Peace.
Vaismoradi, M., Fredriksen Moe, C., Ursin, G., & Ingstad, K. (2022). Looking through racism in the nurse–patient relationship from the lens of culturally congruent care: A sco** review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 78, 2665–2677. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.15267
Weiss, C. M. (2021). Diversity in health care institutions reduces Israeli patients’ prejudice toward Arab. Protocols of National Academy of Science U.S.A. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022634118
**ao, Y. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2012). See your friends close, and your enemies closer: Social identity and identity threat shape the representation of physical distance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 959–972. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212442228
Funding
The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [Mahdi Tarabeih], [Riki Leshem- Halamish], [Y’aarit Bokek- Cohen] and [Pazit Azuri]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [Pazit Azuri] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Ethical Approval
This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Academic College of Tel Aviv- Jaffa, on 29.11.2021. (no. 1042).
Consent to Participate
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Azuri, P., Halamish-Leshem, R., Bokek-Cohen, Y. et al. Who do you Prefer to Take Care of you: A Jewish or an Arab Nurse? Nationality and Religion Preferences in Israeli Hospitals. J Relig Health (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-024-02081-w
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-024-02081-w