Perspectives of Indian Traditional and Allopathic Professionals on Religion/Spirituality and its Role in Medicine: Basis for Developing an Integrative Medicine Program

Abstract

Allopathic medical professionals in developed nations have started to collaborate with traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine (TCAM) to enquire on the role of religion/spirituality (r/s) in patient care. There is scant evidence of such movement in the Indian medical community. We aim to understand the perspectives of Indian TCAM and allopathic professionals on the influence of r/s in health. Using RSMPP (Religion, Spirituality and Medicine, Physician Perspectives) questionnaire, a cross-sectional survey was conducted at seven (five TCAM and two allopathic) pre-selected tertiary care medical institutes in India. Findings of TCAM and allopathic groups were compared. Majority in both groups (75% of TCAM and 84.6% of allopathic practitioners) believed that patients' spiritual focus increases with illness. Up to 58% of TCAM and allopathic respondents report patients receiving support from their religious communities; 87% of TCAM and 73% of allopaths believed spiritual healing to be beneficial and complementary to allopathic medical care. Only 11% of allopaths, as against 40% of TCAM, had reportedly received 'formal' training in r/s. Both TCAM (81.8%) and allopathic (63.7%) professionals agree that spirituality as an academic subject merits inclusion in health education programs (p = 0.0003). Inclusion of spirituality in the health care system is a need for Indian medical professionals as well as their patients, and it could form the basis for integrating TCAM and allopathic medical systems in India.

The NERSH International Collaboration on Values, Spirituality and Religion in Medicine: Development of Questionnaire, Description of Data Pool, and Overview of Pool Publications

“…International research teams translated the RSMPP using mainly forward-backward translations with Face Validations in the following years [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

“…The fifth article was published in 2013 by Ramakrishnan et al on "Perspectives of Indian traditional and allopathic professionals on religion/spirituality and its role in medicine: Basis for developing an integrative medicine program" [15]. Data was collected in five TCAM and two allopathic tertiary care medical institutes in India.…”

“…This article describes the development, contents, and first cross national comparisons based on an international research tool, first developed in 2002 and executed in 2003 with subsequent publications [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], translated into seven languages [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] and optimized in 2013. The data document the impact of Health Professionals' (HPs') religious and secular beliefs and values on the clinical encounter.…”

The International NERSH Data Pool—A Methodological Description of a Data Pool of Religious and Spiritual Values of Health Professionals from Six Continents

“…Samples from Indonesia and India were collected in a joint collaboration under a single study. The Indonesian sample by Karimah was finished in 2010 (single facility, Dr. Soetomo General Hospital, Surabaya, East Java, all physicians) [15], and the Indian sample was collected from 2010 to 2012 by Ramakrishnan (multiple facilities, mixed HPs) [14,15,17]. The Danish version was translated in 2009 and data were collected in the years 2011-2012 (Region of Southern Denmark, all physicians) (not published yet).…”

“…Since its development, the RSMPP was translated into seven languages and research teams from around the world published their national findings in the following decade [6,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Most research teams added and subtracted items to study needs.…”