INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS ON HEALTHCARE PRACTICE (original) (raw)
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Religion and Spirituality: the Perspective of Health Professionals
Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem, 2010
This study examined how health professionals signify the religiosity and faith of patients under cancer treatment and how they themselves experience such phenomena. This is a qualitative-descriptive study, using the phenomenological framework as set out by Stein and Ales Bello, as a way of understanding the human being in its totality - physical, mental and spiritual. Most professionals report they are spiritualists, two are Catholics, one physician is a Buddhist and another is a Spiritist. They believe that religion is inherent to all human beings. Professionals convicted of their religion (less than half) believe in divine protection and recognize religiosity as a support and comfort for patients and their families in coping with illness. They expect patients to live their faith with prudence, never losing sight of reality.
Religion, spirituality, and health care : Social, ethical, and practical considerations
The American Journal of Medicine, 2001
The public has shown increasing interest in the interplay of religion, spirituality, and health, but many physicians are either openly skeptical or unsure how best to respond. Religion and medicine were once closely linked, but spiritual concerns have come to be seen as obstacles to scientific progress or, at best, sentimental attachments of little real value in the battle with disease. As a result, many patients and their families have been cut off from a vast storehouse of wisdom, and many physicians complain of being isolated and overburdened with intractable human dilemmas. Although it is crucial that spirituality and religious faith not be reduced to therapeutic nostrums, an emerging literature has demonstrated a salutary impact of religious belief and practice on patient well-being. Further, if spir
Religions
The spiritual dimension of patients has progressively gained more relevance in healthcare in the last decades. However, the term “spiritual” is an open, fluid concept and, for health purposes, no definition of spirituality is universally accepted. Health professionals and researchers have the challenge to cover the entire spectrum of the spiritual level in their practice. This is particularly difficult because most healthcare courses do not prepare their graduates in this field. They also need to face acts of prejudice by their peers or their managers. Here, the authors aim to clarify some common grounds between secular and religious worlds in the realm of spirituality and healthcare. This is a conceptual manuscript based on the available scientific literature and on the authors’ experience. The text explores the secular and religious intersection involving spirituality and healthcare, together with the common ground shared by the two fields, and consequent clinical implications. Su...
Spiritual and religious interventions in health care: An integrative review
The aim of this review article is describing a research on spiritual and religious interventions in Iran. An integrative review was conducted to determine the state of the science in Iran. Iranmedex, Scientific Information Database, Irandoc, Noormags, Magiran and Google scholar were searched to find articles published in peer-reviewed journals from August 2002 to August 2012. A qualitative approach utilizing content analysis was used in the review. Overall, 21 articles on spiritual and religious interventions in Iran's health care system which met the search criteria were included from 800,000 records in 438 journals. The review shows that there are at least four overarching themes of spiritual and religious interventions: spiritual and religious behaviours, spiritual care as part of a holistic caring approach, spiritual/religious therapy as an effective healing technique, and patients' spiritual needs. These themes are linked and interrelated. The main concern for caregivers was "hanging on to spirituality" in spite of the eroding effects on spiritual beliefs caused by different factors in the health care system. Spirituality plays an important role in the way people live and die. The majority of the research on spiritual and religious interventions in Iran's health care system focuses on patients' need toward spiritual care and health professionals' spiritual approach, as well as factors that influence their spirituality. More research is needed on the factors that influence patients' spiritual needs, spirituality among health care providers, and interventions to engender spiritual and religious interventions in the health care system .
How Are Religion and Spirituality Related to Health? A Study of Physicians’ Perspectives
Southern Medical Journal, 2005
Background: Despite expansive medical literature regarding spirituality and medicine, little is known about physician beliefs regarding the influence of religion on health. Methods: Semistructured interviews with 21 physicians regarding the intersection of religion, spirituality, and medicine. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed for emergent themes through an iterative process of qualitative textual analysis. Results: All participants believed religion influences health, but they did not emphasize the influence of religion on outcomes. Instead, they focused on ways that religion provides a paradigm for understanding and making decisions related to illness and a community in which illness is experienced. Religion was described as beneficial when it enables patients to cope with illness but harmful when it leads to psychological conflict or conflict with medical recommendations. Conclusions: Empirical evidence for a "faith-health connection" may have little influence on physicians' conceptions of and approaches to religion in the patient encounter.
Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2013
We intended to analyse which aspects of spirituality are of relevance for medical doctors in a mostly secular society and how their spiritual/religious attitudes are related to specific views of illness, their dealing with patients' individual situation, and finally physicians' life satisfaction. Data from an anonymous survey enrolling 237 medical doctors from Germany (mean age 45.7 ± 9.6, 58% male, 42% female) indicated that secular forms of spirituality scored highest, while specific religious orientation had the lowest scores. Physicians with a specific specialization in complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) or anthroposophic medicine differed from their conventional counterparts with respect to specific aspects of spirituality; however, the specific views associated with these specialisations were only weakly to moderately correlated with physicians' view on the meaning of illness and how they assume that they would deal with their patients' individual situation. Of interest, the specific aspects of spirituality were negatively correlated with the view of "illness as a meaningless interruption" of life, indicating that physicians with a spiritual attitude would see illness also as a chance for an "individual development" and associated with a "biographical meaning" rather than just a "useless interruption" of life.
Editorial: Religion and Health
Health Care Analysis, 2013
For a variety of reasons, religion and faith, with their accompanying beliefs and practices, are once more becoming overtly visible in public life and discourse. Sometimes this increased visibility focuses on problems such as accommodating the needs of groups of service users or staff. Sometimes it ranges round the increased role that religion and faith might have in promoting and providing better health and care services. One thing seems to be clear; religion in all its many forms and manifestations is not something that can be ignored in publicly used and provided health services. It is here, and it is here to stay. In fact, faith and religion never went away. If the blinkers of a certain kind of secularist Enlightenment rationalism are removed, it is clear that religion and faith communities have been integral to the philosophy, formulation, delivery and motivation for providing health care in the West. From the hospices of medieval Europe right up to the hospices inspired by the palliative care movement, religion has been a motivating and sometimes an inhibiting force. It has often been intrinsic not only to institutional and social provision, but also to personal motivation, practice and survival. The health service in most developed nations accommodates a variety of patient beliefs and practices, and draws professionals from an increasingly diverse range of backgrounds. In the contemporary context of enormous religious pluralism in supposedly secular society and liberal, egalitarian health care structures, the time has come to reprise critically the nature, place and actual and potential position and contribution of religion and faith groups in all their aspects. Should religion, for example, be
Religion Spirituality Med J Islam Acad Sci 2009.pdf
SUMMARY: In recent years there has been growing awareness regarding the role of religion and spiritual-ity (R/S) in the practice of clinical medicine. We aim to assess the beliefs and practises of physicians regarding the role of R/S in clinical practice. Concomitantly, we aim to assess the beliefs of our patients and whether they like to address such issues. Questionnaire based cross sectional study among hospitalized patients and their treating doctors. The majority of patients were male (62.9%), Malay Muslims (75.4%) and had primary (32.5%) or secondary (48.6%) education. Nearly all patients and doctors believed in the existence of God and life after death. Although significant majority of both patients and physicians agreed that religious involvement is associated with improved health, only half of doctors discussed such issues in clinical situations. Three quarters of patients noticed an increase in faith due to illness and similar proportion wanted a religious counsellor to help them rather than a psychiatrist. Only a quarter of physicians agreed with euthanasia, 68% with use of placebo and just 10% with false hope of cure, while among patients only 6.4% agreed with euthanasia and 92% had a hope of cure. Religion is important to many patients and doctors, but more than half doctors ignore it in their clinical practice, a discrepancy between beliefs and behaviour. In conclusion, religion deserves greater attention in the practice of medicine.