King Dana E. - Faith, Spirituality, and Medicine

Faith, Spirituality,
and Medicine

Toward the Making
of the Healing Practitioner

THE HAWORTH PASTORAL PRESS

Religion and Mental Health

Harold G. Koenig, MD

Senior Editor

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Faith, Spirituality, and Medicine: Toward the Making of the Healing Practitioner by Dana E. King

Faith, Spirituality,
and Medicine

Toward the Making
of the Healing Practitioner

Dana E. King, MD

First Published by

The Haworth Pastoral Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580

Transferred to Digital Printing 2010 by Routledge

270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

2000 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover design by Jennifer M. Gaska.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

King, Dana E., 1956

Faith, spirituality, and medicine : toward the making of the healing practitioner / Dana E. King.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7890-0724-X (hard : alk. paper)ISBN 0-7890-1115-8 (soft : alk. paper)

1. MedicineReligious aspects. 2. Medical education. I. Title.

BL65.M4 K55 2000

291.175dc21

00-038329

To Kathy, Karen, and Steven

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dana E. King, MD, grew up in Ohio and attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he received a BA in chemistry. He graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in 1981 and was inducted into AOA, the national medical honorary. He served at the University of Maryland as Co-Chief Resident.

Dr. King is currently Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. He has also been Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the East Carolina University School of Medicine, where he developed and directed a required curriculum for medical students regarding faith, spirituality, and medicine.

Dr. King was selected as one of sixty researchers in the field to participate in a national consensus conference in 1996. He has presented his work nationally and internationally and is a persistent advocate for the integration of spirituality into the care of patients.

CONTRIBUTORS

Dale A. Matthews, MD, FACP, practices general internal medicine in Washington, DC, and teaches at Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is the author of The Faith Factor: Proof of the Healing Power of Prayer, Viking, 1998.

Harold J. May, PhD, is Professor and Head of Behavior Medicine in the Department of Family Medicine at the East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, North Carolina.

Michael E. McCullough, PhD, is Director of Research at the National Institute for Healthcare Research in Rockville, Maryland. Previously he was Assistant Professor at Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana.

Foreword

Research demonstrating a link between traditional religious beliefs and practices and health is rapidly expanding, threatening to bring down the wall of separation between religion and medicine. The teaching and practice of medicine is changing as a result of these findings. In 1992 only about five of the 126 medical schools in the United States had required or elective courses in religion, spirituality, and medicine. Today over sixty such courses exist, including those at major teaching centers such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Case-Western, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University at St. Louis, and others. Despite this, much controversy remains regarding whether and how doctors should address the religious and spiritual needs of patients.

Articles in prominent medical journals have expressed concerns about the ethical implications of clinicians bringing up religion in the context of a medical evaluation, particularly in the absence of clear guidelines. Will physicians impose their own religious beliefs on vulnerable patients? Will patients religious and spiritual beliefs be honored, even if different from those of the physician? Will doctors prescribe religious practices such as going to church or praying to nonreligious patients, just as they encourage patients to exercise and stop smoking? Will such prescriptions induce guilt over moral failures if patients refuse such advice and then become ill or fail to recover? Should boundaries be drawn on how far physicians go in addressing these issues? What are those boundaries? Where does the chaplainthe true professional with years of training in this areafit into the picture? These and many similar questions bewilder and confuse both health and religious professionals, and are likely to concern many patients as well. A critical need exists for education and training guidelines in this area.

Dr. Dana King, a widely known and respected academician, experienced teacher, and compassionate clinician, provides us with a practical, easy-to-read, informative guide for teaching health professionals how to apply to clinical practice the findings from recent research on religion, spirituality, and health. Until now no single resource has been available to help train health professionals to address this deeply sensitive topic. Consequently, the quality of training in medical school and other teaching programs has been highly variable. This long overdue book will go a long way toward standardizing the types of training that clinicians receive, and therefore fills a huge need.