Spirituality in Health Care

During an in class presentation, a representative from Fletcher Allen talked about spirituality in health care. Or rather, it was the lack of spirituality in health care. Statistics presented during this class lecture said that while the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God, only about 2/3 of their physicians do. This presents a staggering disparity in the beliefs of the people receiving care and the people providing this care. While it may seem that a doctor’s or a patient’s beliefs should not alter the care that is received, it does have an impact. For 1/3 of doctors, spirituality is not something that comes up for them in their daily lives, and they may see it as having little importance. But, for almost all of Americans, spirituality is not only something that comes up everyday, it is also something that plays an incredibly important role in their lives. Therefore, it is imperative that physicians are sensitized to this aspect of their patients’ lives.

I feel that this understanding is most important for those physicians that are working in life threatening fields, such as emergency medicine and oncology to name a few. The Fletcher Allen presenter brought up the concept of taking a spiritual history of a patient along with all the other information that is collected. I believe that a process that gathers the importance of spirituality to the patient should become routine and the doctor can use the information gathered here in the patient’s further treatment. It is important that the physician be comfortable discussing spirituality openly with the patient. As has been seen in cases of people with life threatening diseases, the patient’s mental wellness can play a huge role. The doctor being attentive to spirituality should become more commonplace, no longer a topic outside the scope of a physician.