Physical contact in a medical setting

[ShahnazZ]

:salam2:, I hope you are all in the best state of health and iman inshAllah,

My question pertains to females working in a medical and therapeutic setting. I'm currently pondering a career in occupational therapy and in order to work as an occupational therapist, I would have to physically work with patients, helping them to regain use of their limbs, maintain limb movement/coordination, etc. My plan is to do this in a pediatric setting inshAllah so that I will get to work with kids only. However, starting out I would have to start with adults. My question is what do I do when I have to work with a male patient? I know that doctors have to work with patients of the opposite sex all the time, but what does Islam say on the matter? So far I've been told to request female or children patients but that's not too realistic. So I need to know exactly what the ruling on this is.

JazakAllah Khair for listening!

 

[abubaseer]

:salam2: Sister,

I asked the same question to Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Phillips when he was here.
last week. Because one of my of sis-in-laws is on verge of joining med school.

He said that it is permissible with the following condition that we are in and gave example to shabiyaat treating wounded non-Mahrams.

But, he also said that the med schools around the world have usually haraam atmosphere except women only schools in Dubai, Malaysia, Sudan and Saudi where is little to no haraam depending of the schools.

But, it is hard to get admissions in Saudi med schools for foriegners.

He also said that if we don't send our women to get trained in Med schools which even though have haraam in it, then we risk
sending our women to male doctors (or Non-Muslim female doctors, even to them the bodt of Muslim Women is awrah) *forever* who have to touch the body and sometimes even see the private parts of women! which is also haraam.

So we have two haraams coming to us and we have to choose one of them:
Haraam 1: Sending our Women to med schools with haraam atmoshere.
Haraam 2: Sending our Women to Male doctors.

We need to choose between them, and we need to choose lesser of the two.

Which is Haraam1 because.

It is only for period that the woman studies in the med school. And also has
a good in it because these women can get trained from these schools and setup totally halaal med schools where more Women can get trained in correct atmosphere. These Women can also serve the Women patients.

He stressed though that the Women who should be sent to such schools to get trained should be very knowledgable, practicing and motitivated Muslimah who would not get into fitnah and also would setup the required infrastructure after they get trained.
Otherwise there is no point in it.

This is the gist of what he had explained, InshaAllah. Allahu'Aalam

 

[Almeftah]

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

Basically it is Haram for women to have physical contact with non-mahram men.. But Scholars and Ulama made an exception for those working in medical fields where male doctors or male nurses are unavailable.

So women can be treated by male doctors and therapists Only if there arn't any female doctors or therapists, And men can be treated by female doctors and therapists Only if there arn't any male doctors or therapists.