Faith in the ICU: Doctors, patients consider the role of spirituality in the healing process

Deep in the belly of the Veterans Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Chaplain Mark Allison sits on the edge of his chair, leaning forward as he listens to the former staff sergeant on the hospital bed tell his story.

His name is Walt. He joined the Army right after the Vietnam War. He's got plans to decorate his hospital room — his brother should be bringing pictures any day now — and he's going to beat this leukemia. He is cheerful and chatty, yet there is a tiredness in his eyes.

"I've been praying, and hopefully God will bless me," he tells Allison. Walt wants the cancer to go away. He wants to go home.

Walt's pleas are part of the chorus of prayers uttered daily in hospitals across the country as patients and families rely on their faith to deal with difficult situations. But while many doctors acknowledge the role of spirituality in the healing or grieving process, experts say for the past 200-some years, Western medicine has sought to keep medical treatment and spirituality separate. Now, as the future of health care faces unprecedented uncertainty, some doctors say it's time for a change.

More doctors today profess a religious belief than ever before, according to a study in 2005 by Dr. Farr Curlin, co-director of the Program on Medicine and Religion at the University of Chicago. According to the study, 76 percent of doctors believe in God and 59 percent believe in an afterlife. Previous studies of scientists in 1997 and 1998 showed 39 percent of all scientists had a belief in God.

Medicine — dealing with birth, death, injury, loss and pain — and religious concerns are indelibly linked, Curlin said from his office in Illinois.

"It would be good if doctors got up in the morning and when they were going to work thought, 'It is a sacred work that I'm doing' … and even uttering a prayer, 'God help me to do this well,' " Curlin said. "It is not something that is talked about very much, or not talked about enough, in my mind, within the profession itself. But we're going to change (that)."

Some doctors, like Elvira Parravacini, a neonatal attending physician at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, are helping to close the distance between faith and medicine. Parravacini is involved with the Med Conference, an annual conference that focuses on the relationship between physicians and patients, and the enduring worth of a patient's life. Parravacini chose to be a doctor because of her faith, not in spite of it, and believing in God helps her to be a better doctor, she says.