Author Topic: The Spirituality of Medicine (Read 662 times)

Lorenzo · « **on:** June 27, 2012, 09:43:37 AM »

More than 9 out of 10 US physicians claim a religious affiliation. According to research conducted by Farr Curlin, associate professor of medicine and co-director of the Program on Medicine and Religion at the University of Chicago, more than half of responding doctors agree with this statement, "My religious beliefs influence my practice of medicine."

His work is supported by a $2.5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation. "Often religion is construed as a set of personal beliefs and ideas that threatens to prejudice a physician's practices or responses to patients, and interferes with physicians' professional obligations," Curlin explains. But is that true?

Curlin and his team will try to find out, thanks to a new program to help faculty scholars study these questions. The Chicago Tribune carried an extensive report on the work earlier this month. "When doctors are dispirited, the care they give to patients is worse," Curlin said. "Patients should be very hopeful that their doctor sees their work as a remarkable privilege, even a holy privilege, that will make the doctor respond to that patient out of joy."

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120403/UCM-to-launch-Medicine-and-Religion-Faculty-Scholars-Program.aspx

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #1 on:** June 27, 2012, 09:45:47 AM »

A really great point:

"There's a sense of alienation from the practice of medicine itself," Sulmasy said. "When it becomes seen as purely technology, as merely something that is done to persons as objects, that winds up also in a sense making the clinician into an object. We can have spectacular, 21st century technologically advanced medicine and treat people as whole persons at the same time, but we need to move the balance back to where we're doing both and not just one."

One place where spirituality and religion could be integrated into clinical practice is at the medical school level. Following the model of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics (where the Program on Medicine and Religion is based), the faculty scholars program hopes to inspire participant faculty to create curricula in religion and medicine at their home institutions.

"We are modeling this on other successful programs that have really been able to effect a change in the culture of medicine and build capacity in other fields," Sulmasy said. "In the great tradition of the University of Chicago teaching the teachers, we're trying to do the same thing here."

The first class of Faculty Scholars, announced March 1, will include John J. Hardt of Loyola University, Abraham Nussbaum of the University of Colorado, Aasim Padela of the University of Chicago Medicine, and Michael Balboni of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard University. The program will begin with a spring retreat in May 2012.

"We seek to help develop a field that really doesn't exist right now, which is the field of medicine and religion," Curlin said. "It's part of an overall hope that we can, through this work and future projects, contribute to a spiritual renewal within the practice of medicine," Curlin said."

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Author Topic: The Spirituality of Medicine (Read 662 times)

Lorenzo

The Spirituality of Medicine

Lorenzo

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