HEALTH SERVICE RESEARCH POSTER PRESENTATION ABSTRACTS
Please note: All posters will be displayed in
Salons 10-12.
FRIDAY, 5:45-6:30 PM
Curlin FA, Kellemen J, Fredrickson J, Gorawara-Bhat
R.
Does religion constrain the integration of unconventional
healing practices? A qualitative physician survey.
The University of Chicago fcurlin@uchicago.edu
BACKGROUND: Religions and complementary and
alternative medicines (CAM) appear to be related to one another in complex
ways. Both practitioners of religious traditions and supporters of CAM
have been critical of what they see as conventional biomedicine's increasingly
reductive, bureaucratic, impersonal form of health care. Yet religious
persons may be skeptical of and resistant to those CAM practices which
have historical connections to other religious traditions and esoteric
spiritualities. To date, there have been no studies of the ways physicians'
relate their religious (and secular) commitments to their approaches
to CAM practices.
PURPOSE: To qualitatively explore the ways practicing
physicians from different religious (and secular) traditions judge the
efficacy and legitimacy of different types of CAM practices.
METHODS: Semi-structured interviews with 28
physicians to date from multiple religious traditions including Protestant,
Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and not religious. Participants were
asked whether and why they would, or would not, consider integrating
several different types of CAM practices that are paradigmatic of different
CAM categories. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed for
emergent themes through an iterative process of qualitative textual
analysis.
RESULTS: Physicians rarely invoked religious
concepts in explaining their openness or resistance to different CAM
practices, and often said explicitly that they try to keep their religious
beliefs separate from their approaches to patients. Rather, the strongest
theme was that CAM practices are to be tolerated and many times legitimated
if they are initiated or found to be helpful by patients, so long as
the CAM practice does not interfere with conventional medicine and is
not, in the physician's judgment, likely to cause harm. We did find
that several physicians were "uncomfortable" with energy-based and spiritually
rooted practices such as Reiki, Vodun, mind-body cures, faith-based
healing, and prayer. In our sample, physicians tended to by less supportive
of practices rooted in religious and spiritual traditions different
from their own, but few gave explicitly religious reasons for their
resistance. The latter said they could not support practices they believe
are rooted in erroneous religious ideas.
CONCLUSIONS: Physicians justified the integration
of CAM practices principally as an expression of support for patients'
wishes. Some physicians appear to be resistant to those healing practices
that are rooted in religious and spiritual traditions that differ from
their own, but few would explain that resistance as coming from their
religious framework. Future studies are needed to assess the extent
to which religious traditions shape physicians' willingness to integrate
different unconventional healing practices.
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