Prayer Has Proven Power

Because the universe is an energy system and has an inherent order, there is always a response to prayer. This is not belief, supposition, or simply wishful teaching. Prayer has been extensively studied and proven in double- and triple-blind studies. Prayer is energy, and has definite action observable in the external consensual world.

There are numerous reference materials on this fascinating subject. Dr. Harold Koenig, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University and the country's leading authority on faith-and-medicine studies, performed academic research that shows that prayer has beneficial health effects, primarily for the person who does the praying. Studies of prayers in which a person prays for his or her own health or peace of mind show tangible statistical results.

In recent years, the scientific and medical communities have become increasingly interested in the relationship between prayer and healing. Many medical schools now offer specific courses in spirituality or are incorporating the theme into the curriculum. By some estimates, over 350 prayer studies have already been conducted to date in the United States alone.

Unity, a worldwide spiritual resource affiliated with more than 900 churches, recently announced an initiative that will help bring together science and spirituality. Unity President Tom Zender unveiled the Office of Prayer Research to an international gathering from 80 countries during the Parliament of the World's Religions in Barcelona.

Dr. Mitch Krucoff, of Duke University Medical Center, and Dr. Jeffrey Dusek, of Harvard Medical School, participated in the presentation where the announcement was made. Krucoff is renowned for his writings and research on spirituality and medicine and was the principal investigator of Duke's groundbreaking MANTRA prayer study. The MANTRA study was important because, of all patients tested, the lowest absolute patient complications were observed in patients assigned to offsite prayer. These results were significant enough to indicate that further study was needed. Dusek was the principal researcher of Harvard's Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayers (STEP).

The mission of the Office of Prayer Research is the advance of scientific research on the effects of prayer and to serve as a conduit for the exchange of information coming from the scores of prayer studies scientists conduct each year in the U.S. and throughout the world.

I AM Spirit online magazine will provide updates of these and other studies and reports on this relevant subject. We invite you to share your own experiences of prayer in action.

http://www.stnews.org/archives/2004_september/news_student_0904.html

StudentJAMA jumps on spirituality bandwagon
By Julia C. Keller

The final issue of the student edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association ended on a high note for the field of spirituality in medicine.

StudentJAMA devoted its last issue to commentary on spirituality in a patient’s medical history, in the classroom and in practice in faith-based treatment programs.

The issue’s student editor, Kayvon Modjarrad, a doctoral candidate at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, said his personal experiences and his desire to see discussion of spirituality in medicine expand compelled him to put together an edition for medical students.

“People talk about this as if this is somehow a new controversy that has emerged as technology has advanced in medicine and people become more detached from the humanistic aspects of patient care,” Modjarrad said, pointing out that the topic isn’t new, despite recent attention to the subject in the media and funding opportunities.

“It has been born out of religious ideas, religious themes and religious communities. The idea of health has always been tied to spiritual equilibrium,” he said.

Given that history, Modjarrad said he wanted to include a broader spectrum of voices in the debate, including medical students as well as physicians. “I thought that this was an important issue that hadn’t been addressed enough, especially for medical students who are often the frontline care providers and the ones who have more time to deal with these issues — that they should be more aware of the interface between spirituality and medicine,” said Modjarrad.

Modjarrad sought out Dr. Auguste Fortin VI to comment on how the medical classroom provides tomorrow’s physicians with the tools necessary to discuss aspects of patients’ spirituality.

Fortin is the director of spirituality-in-medicine courses taught at Yale University School of Medicine, and oversees classes in which students shadow chaplains and learn how to take a social history that incorporates personal spirituality. (see Science & Theology News’ “Med schools place higher emphasis on spirit,” Jan. 2004).

Fortin’s StudentJAMA commentary detailed the growth of spirituality-in-medicine courses in the United States. He and his colleague, Katherine Barnett, looked at databases of published school curricula to get a sense of which schools were teaching what aspects of spirituality in medicine.

“The field of educating medical students about spirituality in medicine is still young and more work needs to be done to determine what crucial components are most effective,” said Fortin, adding that his research shows that more than 80 schools have courses on spirituality in medicine, and there may be other venues outside of the traditional classroom setting that haven’t been reported.

Though the approaches taken by the curricula are varied, Fortin said, it is crucial that medical students are prepared to ask about this aspect of a patient’s personal life. “There’s no agreement on the best questions to ask, but the important thing is they ask about it,” said Fortin.

Fortin continued that ignoring a patient’s personal aspects could lead to inadequate care. “Unexamined blind spots are always problematic,” he said, listing race, gender, socioeconomic status and faith. “All of those can be an impediment to the type of caring doctor-patient relationship we all hope to achieve.”

To address this aspect of spirituality in medicine, Modjarrad solicited Drs. Alan Astrow and Daniel Sulmasy from St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York to comment on the patient-physician relationship.

Astrow outlined many different studies that surveyed patients’ desires to have their physicians discuss spirituality with them, and how that may have affected their treatment. He also cited surveys of physicians’ understanding of what role they should play in asking about spirituality.

“In a general sense, it appears that most patients would like their physicians to inquire about their spiritual beliefs,” Astrow said. “But they also do not, for the most part, want physicians to spend a great deal of time on that particular issue.”

Dr. Harold Koenig, of Duke University Medical Center and editor-in-chief of Science & Theology News, agreed in his article about taking a spiritual history. “There needs to be research done on what impact does taking a spiritual history have on patient outcomes and the patient-physician relationship,” Koenig said.

Astrow cautioned that sample sizes of the current surveys have been small and conducted in very specific geographic regions. “The results that you find in a more rural area might not be the same as in a large urban area,” said Astrow. “You have to be very specific about what your patient population is to really address what the wishes and needs of most patients really are.”

Though the numbers bolstered the idea of speaking about spirituality in the patient-physician relationship, Astrow and Sulmasy admit that more rigorous work needs to be done in this area.

In discussing intercessory prayer studies, Sulmasy said that the study methodology is already problematic. “Is it really possible to have a control group? It’s pretty hard to find even an atheist who doesn’t have someone praying for them somewhere,” Sulmasy said. “How do we say that we’ve separated one group from another from a scientific point of view?”

Sulmasy added that researchers must be “narrower about what we do and humbler about what we can do in research” for the field of spiritually in health care to make headway.

Similarly, Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of JAMA, commented in an editorial that StudentJAMA was being discontinued because of a need for more evidence-based research: “[M]edical students are increasingly aware of and learning the importance of emphasizing evidence rather than opinion,” she wrote.

The field of spirituality in medicine is perhaps a prime example of the need for increased research to fully incorporate the idea into health care. However, Sulmasy cautioned, the community must recognize that while “studies have a place, it’s a limited place.”

Modjarrad agreed that he thought the topic should be addressed regardless of where the debate ended. “I wasn’t hoping to make a case for one way or another for how spiritual issues should be dealt with and how involved with they should be in patient care,” said Modjarrad. “I just thought that it includes patient decisions and patient care, and that’s why I think the medical and health-care community should be aware of them.”

Fortin was optimistic that coverage in the student issue of JAMA could only help to increase health care’s overall effectiveness.

“It’s heartening that students involved in JAMA were interested enough in this area to put an issue together on the topic,” he said. “I think that speaks well for the future of medicine, the future of caring physicians.”

Koenig agreed: “The medical students have put up their flag, and have said, ‘Hey you guys, this is important and we’re going to be the new guys on the block pretty soon. You guys need to get with the program.’”

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