In the inpatient psychiatry department at Hennepin County Medical Center, patients can spend days or weeks getting treatment. Most of the time, they don’t have access to their phones. Many are facing serious mental health challenges.
For some Muslim patients, these circumstances can make it difficult to try and find which direction to face for prayer.
Muslims are obligated to pray five times a day, each time while facing the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city in Islam. This direction is called qibla.
Hennepin Healthcare recently expanded a program to the psychiatry department that places stickers on the walls to help patients find qibla. Staff say it’s a small gesture with a big impact.
Normally, patients would have to find qibla by using an app on their smartphone, or by asking a staff member for help. But Imam Sharif Mohamed said when patients aren’t feeling their best and are in an unfamiliar environment, that’s one more thing that they have to worry about.
He said adding the stickers is a small thing the hospital can do to put Muslim patients more at ease.
“It creates some kind of healing, some kind of belonging, some kind of respect,” Sharif said.
Sharif is the co-founder of Open Path Resources, and helped set up a Muslim spiritual care program at Hennepin Healthcare and worked with hospital staff to place the stickers in the correct position.
In 2021, the hospital added stickers on the walls of rooms in the emergency department that noted qibla, after a doctor noticed a patient facing the wrong direction while praying. Sharif said the doctor did some research and learned about hotels placing qibla stickers in some rooms, and wanted HCMC to do something similar. Hennepin Healthcare then partnered with Sharif to place the stickers.
Hennepin Healthcare is not the only local health care system to take this step. HealthPartners added qibla stickers to some of its hospitals and clinics in 2023, including at Regions and Methodist hospitals. M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital also has qibla stickers in its chapel and meditation room.
Hennepin Healthcare serves a diverse patient population that includes many Muslims. Between January and October of this year, just over 6% of admitted patients at HCMC identified as Muslim, according to Hennepin Healthcare. Islam is also HCMC’s third-highest religious preference among admitted patients.
This fall, the hospital added more than 70 qibla stickers to rooms in its inpatient psychiatry and acute psychiatric services departments. Patients experiencing mental health challenges typically stay in the inpatient unit for an average of two weeks.
For these patients, who are spending an extended amount of time at the hospital and often don’t have access to their phones, the stickers reduce anxiety and can make the space feel more welcoming, Sharif said.
It can also help build trust between patients and their care providers. Sharif said this may help patients feel more comfortable taking prescription medication and accepting the care that providers recommend.
That trust leads patients to say, “‘I will take [my medications], because they respect my faith, because they respect my culture, because they see me as a whole,’” Sharif said.
Frank Antwi is a clinical care supervisor of inpatient psychiatry at the hospital. He said expanding the stickers to that area is overdue. He said a number of patients have inquired about which way Mecca is and have asked staff members to help them locate it.
“I think it should have been sooner,” he said.
Antwi said mental, physical and spiritual health are all connected. Having a patient be able to feel well spiritually can help them as they recover and get treatment. When people don’t feel their best, praying or meditating can help.
He also said that the stickers could remind patients that they can pray if they wish to.
“They might not think about it right away, but when they see that there’s a direction, it might be something to remind them, ‘This is something I can do for my well-being,’” he said.
