Spirituality in Medicine: The Physician’s Perspective

Many public opinion surveys indicate that patients desire an open dialogue on spirituality/religion with their physicians. What role does spirituality play in the physician/patient relationship and in what contexts do these conversations arise? What do physicians think about the appropriateness of such discussions? Because the role of spirituality in clinical settings is so controversial, I wanted to learn from the experiences that physicians have had. My interviews with eight physicians helped me to establish their familiarity with spiritual assessment tools, to determine the contexts where spirituality is an important component of patient care, and to elucidate the methods these physicians use to best handle situations involving spirituality which are often characterized by complexity. Ultimately, I found that there is an incredible diversity to both the experiences and opinions held by physicians on the topic and that many physicians believe that spirituality has an important place in a clinical setting despite the substantial obstacles present that frequently prevent incorporating a spiritual component into a medical practice