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one patient and one physician will speak to why it's a good thing if religion/spirituality are practiced in medicine; and the other two to speak against.
here's what the editor wrote me when i asked her the same question:
As far as the question is concerned, we really don’t have any specifics. We just want your opinion on why you believe spirituality should not be incorporated into medicine. Since you have a personal experience, we would like you to briefly relate that (without mentioned the doctor’s name, of course), and then perhaps talk about other potential pitfalls. You are free to discuss whatever you like, but I’ll give you a list of a few of my concerns regarding this issue. The first one, obviously, is judgment. If a physician has specific religious beliefs, and brings them into the office, how will that affect patient care? Another one, in my mind, is a potential problem with different religions. If a white patient is seeing a dark-skinned, foreign-born physician, how will spirituality be incorporated into the practice? Or will it? Or vice versa, if a Chinese or Middle-Eastern patient is seeing a white Christian physician, how will that be handled? Will physicians have to go through training in order to deal with a variety of religious beliefs? Or will they just have a network of spiritual advisors that they will refer the patients to? Another aspect to think about is marketing. If a physicians’ group markets themselves as Christian, will it turn off patients who aren’t Christian? And can Christian physicians treat non-Christian patients objectively?
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personally, i think they are confusing religion and spirituality and intend to speak to that in my piece along with a pragmatic and historical critique.
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