Aspects of Spirituality in Medical Doctors and Their Relation to Specific Views of Illness and Dealing with Their Patients' Individual Situation

Table 4

Intercorrelations of aspects of spirituality in medical doctors.

	Religious orientation	Quest orientation	Aspiring beauty/wisdom	Conscious interactions	Compassion/generosity	Transcendence conviction
Aspects of spirituality
Religious orientation		.473**	.486**	.169**	.291**	.743**
Quest orientation			.693**	.449**	.424**	.557**
Aspiring beauty/insight				.365**	.402**	.515**
Conscious interactions					.531**	.291**
Compassion/generosity						.347**
Life satisfaction (Sum Score)	.139	.083	.230**	.271**	.126	.040
Illness as a meaningless interruption (sum score)	−.304**	−.332**	−.259**	−.399**	−.381**	−.406**
Meaning of illness
Item SK1 “whether a patient my see any meaning in illness and life or not is not of importance for the process of recovery”	−.185**	−.179**	−.123	−.273**	−.280**	−.189**
Item SK2 “to me it is completely incomprehensible that illness may have a biographical meaning in life of man”	−.237**	−.262**	−.240**	−.347**	−.361**	−.292**
Item SK3 “illness is nothing more than a meaningless interruption of life’s course”	−.258**	−.376**	−.301**	−.387**	−.392**	−.409**
Item SK4 “illness prevents patients’ individual development”	−.314**	−.395**	−.334**	−.386**	−.375**	−.461**
Item SK5 reverse “illness is a chance to deal more consciously with life”	−.223**	−.254**	−.178**	−.279**	−.240**	−.290**
Dealing with patients’ individual situation
Item SK9 “I have no time to busy myself with patients’ individual situation”	−.035	−.087	−.112	−.156	−.060	−.027
Item SK10 “If I had also to deal with patients’ individual situation, it would unnecessarily cost time and nerves”	−.084	−.200**	−.184**	−.332**	−.225**	−.153
Item SK6 “whether a patient may understand the profound causes of illness or not, is irrelevant for the process of recovery”	−.088	−.251**	−.128	−.213**	−.256**	−.123
Item SK8 “often it is simply a matter of fate or chance whether a patient becomes healthy again or not.”	.154	−.031	.046	−.123	−.159	.046
Item ÄS18 “for diagnosis and finding an adequate treatment, patients’ own opinion about what may have caused their illness is not of importance”	−.204**	−.210**	−.134	−.237**	−.183**	−.160

^∗∗𝑃<0.01 (Spearman rho).