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	𝐹 value; (𝑃 value)
	Illness as a meaningless interruption (Sum scores, range 0–100)	—	—	—	14.7±14.5	7.5±9.6	10.0±11.7	19.5±17.4	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	0.77±0.81	0.43±0.63	0.52±0.77	0.75±0.86	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	0.55±0.88	0.17±0.66	0.32±0.63	0.57±0.87	3.0; (0.033)
SK3	Illness is nothing more than a meaningless interruption of life’s course	4	8	88	0.43±0.69	0.05±0.31	0.16±0.37	0.74±0.95	10.3 (<0.001)
SK4	Illness prevents patients’ individual development	7	11	82	0.52±0.62	0.14±0.35	0.40±0.58	1.04±1.09	13.7 (<0.001)
SK5	Illness is a chance to deal more consciously with life	92	4	4	3.34±0.76	3.29±0.84	3.40±0.71	3.20±0.78	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	1.19±1.25	1.43±1.15	1.12±1.20	1.45±1.15	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	0.57±1.04	0.69 ± 0.90	0.44±0.71	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	0.78±0.70	0.85±0.88	0.52±0.77	0.94±0.93	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	1.47±1.28	1.90±1.11	1.68±1.14	1.68±1.11	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	1.09±1.15	0.88±0.86	0.59±0.97	1.03±0.98	1.7; (n.s.)