Understand and make use of the connections between health and religion to improve your practice!

Research points to a clear link between people's religious beliefs and practices and their health. These developments have ushered in a new era in health care, in which meaning and purpose stand alongside biology as vital factors in health outcomes. Now the gap is closing between medicine and religion, as evidenced by the more than 60 US medical school courses now being given in spirituality, religion, and medicine, including courses at major teaching centers such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Case-Western, and others.

Faith, Spirituality, and Medicine: Toward the Making of the Healing Practitioner promotes the integration of spirituality into medical care by exploring the connection between patient health and traditional religious beliefs and practices. This useful guide emphasizes basic, easily understood principles that will help health professionals apply current research findings linking religion, spirituality, and health.

Faith, Spirituality, and Medicine does not advocate any particular set of beliefs or evangelize as it helps you integrate spiritual care into the care of patients by showing you how to:

• take a patient's spiritual history
• correlate religious beliefs with health beliefs
• address the individual spiritual needs of your patients
• choose a course of treatment that is in agreement with the religious belief of the patient
• incorporate appropriate clergy into treatment plans

Faith, Spirituality, and Medicine describes a biopsychosocial-spiritual model that emphasizes the need to view patients not simply as biological creatures, but as physical, psychological, social, and spiritual beings if they are to be effectively treated and healed as whole persons.