Word: patient
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...What patients need, he says, is a "person who can make a competent assessment and engage a patient's spiritual person in the service of health. When people say, 'I'm not sure you can help because I'm not very religious,' the chaplains say, 'That's not a problem. Can I sit down and engage you in conversation...
Kristeller, who had participated in earlier work exploring how physicians could help their patients quit smoking, recalled a short - five- to seven-minute - conversation that the leader of a study had devised to help doctors address the problem. The recommended dialogue conformed to what's known as patient-centered care - a clinical way of saying doctors should ask questions then clam up and listen to the answers. In the case of smoking, they were advised merely to make their concern known to patients, then ask them if they'd ever tried to quit before. Depending on how that first question...
...Patients who say yes often find themselves exploring what they consider secular questions that touch on such primal matters of life and death, they might as well be spiritual ones. The chaplains can also refer patients to other care providers, such as social workers, psychologists and guided-imagery specialists. The point of all this isn't so much what the modality is; it's that the patient has a chance to find one that works. "People say you tell the truth to your doctor, your priest and your funeral director," says Smith, "because these people matter...
Smith's group is slowly going national, and even the most literal-minded scientists welcome the development. Says Sloan, the author of Blind Faith: "I think that a chaplain's job is to explore the patient's values and help the patient come to some decision. I think that's absolutely right...
...people have concerns about physicians playing too much of a role in the religious and spiritual beliefs of patients, so we need to understand what both the doctor's and the patient's motivations are and try to understand when it shouldn't be done and why it shouldn't be done...