Research Article Aspects of Spirituality in Medical Doctors and Their Relation to Specific Views of Illness and Dealing with Their Patients ’ Individual Situation

Copyright © 2013 Arndt Büssing et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 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 anthroposophicmedicine 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 negativel