Medicine and Religion Together Can Improve Geriatric Care
Andrew Achenbaum, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus/Senior Scholar, University of Houston/Institute for Spirituality and Health
As a child, I knew that doctors and ministers independently had more authority than my parents or friends. Sixty years later, the landscape has changed. Academic medicine is more specialized; its triumphs lie in community health, in evidence-based research and procedures, and in curing and fixing more than caring. Denominations once considered mainstream have lost members and status. Geriatric fellowships go unfulfilled; churches seek out young families. Ageism, implicit and explicit, will not serve the current needs and desires of aging Boomers.
Medical educators and religious advocates have begun to collaborate in ways that should advance geriatric care. Although the evidence is not as robust as advocates of complementary medicine often claim, spiritual practices (sometimes borrowed or adapted from the three Abramic traditions) do help older patients afflicted.with chronic illnesses. This is especially pertinent in rethinking end of life issues, which already build on hospice and palliative care.
A fuller range of caring for Boomers, a cohort that has defied traditional practices, through richer collaborations between religion and medicine, should stir imaginations about how we deal with age in the clinic and the pew.
As a child, I knew that doctors and ministers independently had more authority than my parents or friends. Sixty years later, the landscape has changed. Academic medicine is more specialized; its triumphs lie in community health, in evidence-based research and procedures, and in curing and fixing more than caring. Denominations once considered mainstream have lost members and status. Geriatric fellowships go unfulfilled; churches seek out young families. Ageism, implicit and explicit, will not serve the current needs and desires of aging Boomers.
Medical educators and religious advocates have begun to collaborate in ways that should advance geriatric care. Although the evidence is not as robust as advocates of complementary medicine often claim, spiritual practices (sometimes borrowed or adapted from the three Abramic traditions) do help older patients afflicted.with chronic illnesses. This is especially pertinent in rethinking end of life issues, which already build on hospice and palliative care.
A fuller range of caring for Boomers, a cohort that has defied traditional practices, through richer collaborations between religion and medicine, should stir imaginations about how we deal with age in the clinic and the pew.