By Rick DelVecchio, Catholic News Service, May-6-2008

SAN FRANCISCO - Medicine shrinks from caring for the spiritual needs of dying patients, even though spirituality is what most people yearn for most at the end of life, Franciscan Brother Daniel Sulmasy, a physician and philosopher, told an audience at the University of San Francisco April 28.

Doctors tend to ignore spiritual care or back away from it out of fear of inadequacy or invading patients' privacy, Brother Sulmasy said. Often they think they are helping, but underserve patients by turning spiritual questions into technical problems, he said.

For dying patients, the impulse is the reverse, he said: The terminal patient whose spiritual life is outstanding despite great physical distress reports having an outstanding quality of life.

The split is so large that a new model for medical education may be needed, he said. The model would integrate biological, social and spiritual issues in training doctors.

Doctors should be mindful that patients' spiritual questions are fundamental -- deeper than the biological, moral and ethical issues that concern clinicians and hospital ethics advisory boards, said Brother Sulmasy, who holds the Sisters of Charity chair in ethics at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.

"Spirituality is incredibly important in the care of patients and it's shocking how we do wind up ignoring so much of it," he said.....TO CONTINUE, CLICK ON TITLE......