 Spiritual and religious beliefs in acute illness--Is this a feasible area for study?Michael King, Peter Speck and Angela Thomas Social Science & Medicine, 1994, vol. 38, issue 4, 631-636 Abstract: In this paper we discuss the measurement of spiritual, religious and philosophical beliefs in patients admitted to hospital with acute physical illness. The discussion is based on the results of a preliminary study of the beliefs of 300 patients studied by face-to-face interview and questionnaire. Principal outcome measures at 6 months were self reported psychological and belief scores and physical state as reported in the medical records. Two thirds of patients reported a religious and/or spiritual belief system. Strength of belief was not associated with social, psychological or diagnostic factors. However, those patients with a religious and/or spiritual life view who expressed strong beliefs were likely to fare less well clinically. We conclude that empirical study of patients' beliefs is possible, though care must be exercised over the measures used. Beliefs were at least as predictive of outcome as other social and psychological factors. This area is of considerable importance to patients and should not be neglected by carers of researchers. Keywords: religion; health; psychology; acute; illness; hospital; care (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:38:y:1994:i:4:p:631-636 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.