Articles of faith: no 'carte blanche' to pray for patients

Today the British Medical Association is debating spiritual care in the NHS, and the preservation of historic freedoms to offer prayer to patients. The motion is sensitively worded, acknowledging the checks and balances already built into the system – for example, the warning against inappropriate discussion of faith matters in the General Medical Council’s guidance on Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice. But it "calls on Health Departments to allow appropriate consensual discussion of spiritual matters within the NHS, when done with respect for the views and sensitivities of individuals".

The high-profile suspension of nurse Caroline Petrie for offering to pray with a patient, lie behind this debate which asks key questions, regarding the place of spirituality within healthcare. We are all spiritual beings. As medicine advances, it would be a tragedy if science blinded us to the fact that we are not just body and mind; but soul or spirit as well. When disease strikes, we all ask those the same, essentially spiritual questions of meaning and purpose: Why pain? Why suffering? Why me? Why now?

The NHS is committed – in theory – to providing spiritual care: national and local guidelines detail the responsibility of NHS trusts to do this. The Department of Health argues that such provision is the responsibility of chaplaincy teams, and that frontline professionals should simply refer.

However, this ignores the reality. At a given moment, within a patient-professional relationship of mutual trust, a patient invites a professional into a private place, a personal place, sometimes a sacred place. That invitation demands a human response there and then, not another box ticked or another form filled.

But are religious faith, prayer, and spiritual care of any benefit? A former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists quotes from Koenig’s definitive Handbook of Religion and Health, based on 1,200 research studies and 400 reviews:

"In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with:

• Well-being, happiness and life satisfaction

• Hope and optimism

• Purpose and meaning in life

• Higher self-esteem…

• Less loneliness

• Lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression

• Lower rates of suicide

• Less anxiety

• Less psychosis…

• Lower rates of alcohol and drug use…

• Less delinquency and criminal activity

• Greater marital stability…

We concluded that, for the vast majority of people, the apparent benefits of devout religious belief and practice probably outweigh the risks".

Dr Andrew Fergusson, for ten years a GP, is now the Head of Communications at the Christian Medical Fellowship