Research Article
Aspects of Spirituality in Medical Doctors and Their Relation to Specific Views of Illness and Dealing with Their Patients' Individual Situation
Table 3
Meaning of illness and physicians’ dealing with patients’ individual situation with respect to professional specialisation.
| | | Agreement/disagreement (%) | Professional specialisation (means ± SD) | | | Yes (applies quite a bit; applies very much) | Undecided | No (does not apply at all; does not truly apply) | CAM | AM | Psychotherapists | None/ conventional | value ( value) |
| | Illness as a meaningless interruption (Sum scores, range 0–100) | — | — | — | | | | | 7.8 (<0.001) |
| | Meaning of Illness (range 0–4) | | | | | | | | | SK1 | Whether a patient my see any meaning in illness and life or not is not of importance for the process of recovery | 4 | 6 | 90 | | | | | 2.1 (0.095) | SK2 | To me it is completely incomprehensible that illness may have a biographical meaning in life of man | 4 | 4 | 92 | | | | | 3.0 (0.033) | SK3 | Illness is nothing more than a meaningless interruption of life’s course | 4 | 8 | 88 | | | | | 10.3 (<0.001) | SK4 | Illness prevents patients’ individual development | 7 | 11 | 82 | | | | | 13.7 (<0.001) | SK5 | Illness is a chance to deal more consciously with life | 92 | 4 | 4 | | | | | 0.7 (n.s.) |
| | Dealing with patients’ individual situation (range 0–4) | | | | | | | | | SK9 | I have no time to busy myself with patients’ individual situation | 23 | 10 | 67 | | | | | 0.9 (n.s.) | SK10 | If I had also to deal with patients’ individual situation, it would unnecessarily cost time and nerves | 7 | 5 | 88 | | 0.69 ± 0.90 | | 0.85 ± 0.91 | 2.0 (n.s.) | SK6 | Whether a patient may understand the profound causes of illness or not is irrelevant for the process of recovery | 7 | 10 | 83 | | | | | 1.7 (n.s.) | SK8 | Often it is simply a matter of fate or chance whether a patient becomes healthy again or not | 27 | 28 | 45 | | | | | 1.0 (n.s.) | ÄS18 | For diagnosis and finding an adequate treatment, patients’ own opinion about what may have caused their illness is not of importance | 10 | 13 | 67 | | | | | 1.7 (n.s.) |
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