hahah busy doing real life i think!! i spend very little time on the interwebz other than instagram (which is now a new unhealthy obsession)... but i guess i’m starting to care a lot more about people i actually know, rather than strangers across the world :P no offence darlings.

i mean just in general. i don’t think it’s necessarily worse in medicine, and i’d like to think that through all of our patient care training we get SLIGHTLY better than the average population at cultural competency, but no doubt it’s still severely lacking. especially in my field, in psychiatry where our entire assessment is dependent on patients trust us and us understanding them, there’s a lot of work to do and i’m working on introducing a cultural psychiatry curriculum into my residency program here. 

yes! i can only answer for myself, but the answer is a resounding yes!!! the reason is not as simple as it seems, ie. having a moral compass, being told what is right and wrong. for me, religion provides a framework for EVERY DECISION i make, which is different from a lot of religions and/or the way people practice their religions. a lot of people like to take lessons from church about how to be a better human being and leave it at that (nothing wrong with that), but for me islam is a chassis for literally everything in my life, and if there isn’t specific islamic guidance on particular issues, there is a framework for how to go about making a decision in that issue. that means for how i deal with patients, to taking out an interest-bearing loan or mortgage, to how i speak to my parents, to what i do in my free time, to how to have sex, to how raise children, to how to eat, to how to go to the washroom, to how to be kind to my neighbour. and i firmly believe that islam makes the right call in all these decisions, even if i don’t always have the foresight to see it or fully understand it, because i know from the areas islam has helped me significantly in my life enough to trust it, and trust god. 

hmm not sure why what i think matters, but since you asked... i personally don’t like them for myself, but i see why some people living in our very superficial shallow society may feel compelled to do so...? is that a good enough answer? lol