More doctors recommending dose of God for their patients
Tribune staff report May 2, 2008
You might think a hospital sounds like an odd place to launch a spiritual quest. But for some patients, that's precisely where they find religion.
In fact, some doctors even rely on divine intervention to assist them in the healing process.
Tribune reporter Joel Hood's story this week about a continuous prayer week held in Adventist Bolingbrook Hospital illustrated how some hospitals recognize and embrace their role as a spiritual destination.
Dr. Yong Kim was one of the staff recruited to pray. An elder at his Korean Methodist church, Kim spent several hours praying for his patients' recovery. He told Joel that prayer is vital to a patient's recovery.
Kim is one of a burgeoning number of doctors who factor prayer into treatment, said Dr. Robert Klitzman, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. In interviews with 50 doctors, Klitzman learned that many are oblivious to patients' spiritual needs until they become patients themselves.
Has the threat of a serious illness prompted you to reassess your relationship with God? Do your doctors tend to your spiritual well-being too?
Many physicians see a lot of patients who show illness, but only a few who express or portray sickness.
As expressed in a little booklet by Dr. Donald Dudley, for centuries, patient and physicians alike have attributed accidents or illnesses to bad luck or bad timing, or carelessness or an act of God.
Many of us see neighbors or close friends spend half their time running from doctor to doctor, week or month after month. Is their faith in hoping to find one doctor that is smarter than another rather than having faith in themselves and the doctor they have chosen?
Consider this startling fact. Again, and I extract from the same little booklet, medical records indicate 70 percent of those medical treatments and surgical procedures are administered to only 30 percent of us.
We all believe in something beneficial to our health or not beneficial to our health. As human beings we are incredibly complex with an endless stream of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs that must be satisfied.
It is impossible for us to go from one minute to the next wondering if what I do every minute is going to make me sick or well.
We may or may not realize it, but a deep-seated love for ourselves and everything around us including the bugs, the viruses, and other good or bad challenges, is what keeps our immune system strong and all of internal organs working in harmony.
Love and confidence within ourselves is the key.
The important part of this is that we all must express the love that is in us from time to time to maintain good physical and mental health.
There is another excellent little book that I have enjoyed and have thought of from time to time when treating patients over the past 50-plus years.
It expresses more meaning to me now than 40 years ago possibly because I am in contact with more patients closer to my age now than before.
Most of us have some ongoing illness but few of us are expressing a sickness. Just remember to get a good physical from a physician that will look beyond just the laboratory studies and will take time to look, examine and talk to you about your concerns.
Ask questions and understand that changes are taking place in your body.
What deficiencies or alterations that possibly have taken place over the past few years in your body could be corrected or supported without synthetic drugs?
This may require physical adjustments such as exercise, nutritional changes, weight changes, and a host of others, or it could be mental or emotional changes such as relationships with your family, husband or wife, neighbors, or whoever may need to be addressed.
Last, and possibly the most important, is your inner spiritual realm. Are you happy? Do you love yourself?
If not, this will all be reflected through physical functions particularly in areas where time and age have already influenced function.
Love and be happy with yourself. Know and understand weaknesses that are taking place with age.
Correct or support that which you can do or have done naturally and use crutches in the form of drugs to support that which is showing failure.
Just remember that there are no synthetic drugs used that don't have side effects.
You can not support one system in an artificial way without altering or influencing another system of the body. Talk to your doctor about your concerns.
Xerpi