What if the doctor is a very religious person? Why not pray with patients?
Q: Many people feel there is a connection between mind and body and spirit. If that’s real, shouldn’t the healer deal with all those possible problems? A: But we have to deal with evidence. The evidence connecting, for example, psychological factors like depression or hostility and heart disease is far better established than any connections between religious values and health outcomes. And there’s another reason why physicians shouldn’t do that. Religion in the United States holds a very special position. It’s very different from hostility or depression. We prize religious freedom in this country, and one of the dangers that my colleagues and I foresee about physicians engaging in religious interactions with patients is that it threatens the religious freedom of patients. If physicians, because of the power that they have in the physician-patient relationship, start making recommendations to patients about how they ought to behave religiously, that becomes very dangerous. Patients oug
