Evolution of a Medical Student’s Perspective on the Importance of Spirituality in Health Throughout Their Medical Education
Kirollos Roman, M.D., 3rd year medical student, University of Florida College of Medicine
Extensive research has been done concerning the importance of spirituality in health, specifically how the religiosity or spirituality of a patient can impact his/her physical and/or mental well-being. Many of these studies have portrayed how spirituality and religiosity can strengthen a person’s sense of meaning in life and their optimism, both of which are significantly associated with health. For that reason, addressing a patient’s spiritual needs is an important responsibility that is often overlooked by medical residents and physicians, the consequence being intensive, expensive, and oftentimes futile life-prolonging or end of life care sought out by patients struggling to cope. The upcoming generation of medical professionals needs to be educated on the implications of spirituality in medicine. More importantly, they need to be properly prepared to address spirituality with their patients comfortably, especially in an age of “social tiptoeing” to avoid an involuntary offense. Surveys taken by medical students have shown that there is significant confusion concerning the distinction between spirituality and religiosity, which reflects in the barriers medical students claimed prevent them from addressing spirituality with their patients: fear of imposing their own beliefs and the difficulties in discriminating religiosity from spirituality. This stresses the importance of addressing this in the medical education system to prepare students. Spirituality has been incorporated into many medical schools’ curricula, but studies investigating the extent to which spirituality is addressed have returned insignificant results, primarily due to the bias involved in self-reported measures of success. To better understand the success of these new curricular changes and assess possible areas for improvement, a survey will be administered to assess how the perspective of a medical student on the importance of spirituality in health changes throughout their medical education. It will also explore the willingness, comfort level, and competency of a student to discuss spirituality with a patient, as well as possible factors that may impact said points. The survey, which has already been completed, will be administered first to incoming medical students, again after their first 2 educational years, and a third time after their 2 clinical years. The motive in doing so is to analyze whether addressing spirituality in early education is more or less important than the students being exposed to real situations and experiencing it for themselves, and how each differs in its impact on the student’s outlook on spirituality in health. The extent to which the results change or do not change throughout the 4 years will provide insight as to whether the recent incorporation of spirituality into medical curricula nationwide has yielded the desired results or needs to be re-addressed, and whether or not education on the topic should also be provided in a more personalized manner during clinical rotations, when students may have personal experiences with patients on which to reflect. For the purpose of early results as well, the survey will be administered to each of the 4 medical school classes the first time in order to compare differences in perspective at a certain snapshot in time.
Extensive research has been done concerning the importance of spirituality in health, specifically how the religiosity or spirituality of a patient can impact his/her physical and/or mental well-being. Many of these studies have portrayed how spirituality and religiosity can strengthen a person’s sense of meaning in life and their optimism, both of which are significantly associated with health. For that reason, addressing a patient’s spiritual needs is an important responsibility that is often overlooked by medical residents and physicians, the consequence being intensive, expensive, and oftentimes futile life-prolonging or end of life care sought out by patients struggling to cope. The upcoming generation of medical professionals needs to be educated on the implications of spirituality in medicine. More importantly, they need to be properly prepared to address spirituality with their patients comfortably, especially in an age of “social tiptoeing” to avoid an involuntary offense. Surveys taken by medical students have shown that there is significant confusion concerning the distinction between spirituality and religiosity, which reflects in the barriers medical students claimed prevent them from addressing spirituality with their patients: fear of imposing their own beliefs and the difficulties in discriminating religiosity from spirituality. This stresses the importance of addressing this in the medical education system to prepare students. Spirituality has been incorporated into many medical schools’ curricula, but studies investigating the extent to which spirituality is addressed have returned insignificant results, primarily due to the bias involved in self-reported measures of success. To better understand the success of these new curricular changes and assess possible areas for improvement, a survey will be administered to assess how the perspective of a medical student on the importance of spirituality in health changes throughout their medical education. It will also explore the willingness, comfort level, and competency of a student to discuss spirituality with a patient, as well as possible factors that may impact said points. The survey, which has already been completed, will be administered first to incoming medical students, again after their first 2 educational years, and a third time after their 2 clinical years. The motive in doing so is to analyze whether addressing spirituality in early education is more or less important than the students being exposed to real situations and experiencing it for themselves, and how each differs in its impact on the student’s outlook on spirituality in health. The extent to which the results change or do not change throughout the 4 years will provide insight as to whether the recent incorporation of spirituality into medical curricula nationwide has yielded the desired results or needs to be re-addressed, and whether or not education on the topic should also be provided in a more personalized manner during clinical rotations, when students may have personal experiences with patients on which to reflect. For the purpose of early results as well, the survey will be administered to each of the 4 medical school classes the first time in order to compare differences in perspective at a certain snapshot in time.