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Doctors-to-be get a dose of spiritual healing
Medical students learn new focus
April 11, 1997
Web posted at: 10:25 p.m. EDT (0225 GMT)From Correspondent Al Hinman
MAYWOOD, Illinois (CNN) -- Evidence is growing that religious faith or spirituality can play a major role in the healing process.
As researchers study how faith works, and why, at least one medical school is training future doctors to understand it and put it to use in their work.
Every first-year medical student at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago must make hospital rounds with a pastoral care-mentor to learn to listen to patients' needs.
The premise is that a patient's physical health depends largely on his or her spiritual health.
The idea, said Marie Coglianese, Loyola's director of pastoral care, is "to help patients focus on some of the faith, some of the beliefs and values that helped get them through this hospitalization that's been very difficult and rough."
Hospital chaplain Maureen Fuechtmann added, "Illness befalls the person. Not just bodies, but the whole person. And that person has a whole set of belief systems and values, and the spirit is wounded."
Doctors learn to focus on patient's 'story'
Backed by those in charge of this Jesuit-affiliated medical center, Fuechtmann believes chaplains and other spiritual counselors should not have a monopoly on pastoral care. Hence the training for medical students.
"We speak very explicitly to the students that whatever your faith, tradition or lack of it, to be a good physician you must focus on your patients and whatever their story is, and whatever their needs are," she said.
What these future doctors are learning is already standard practice for many physicians who recognize the power that faith -- or even just a positive attitude -- can have. Prayer and belief have worked at times when even the best medicine has failed.
But there are fears that the mounting pressures of managed care will cut short the time doctors can spend listening to their patients.
"The fear," said Dr. Sidney Wiessman of the medical center, "is that they will abandon interest in the psyche and the soul, and will only be focused on the technical elements."
Perhaps, but the hope at this medical school is that lessons being taught to the future doctors it trains are ones that will never be forgotten.
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