By Bonnie Booth
AM News
The newspaper for America’s Physicians
Christina M. Puchalski, MD, was a bit of a pioneer when she created a spirituality and health course in 1992 at George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.
The course, offered as an elective, covered spiritual practices, including meditation, as well as topics such as humor and alternative medicine.
When Dr. Puchalski first began teaching her course, 2% of medical schools offered course work in spirituality. By 2004, the figure was 67%.
Now 100 of the approximately 150 U.S. medical schools offer some variation of spirituality-in-medicine course work. And 75 of those 100 require their students to take at least one course on the topic.
Dr. Puchalski can take some credit for the change. She and a colleague developed a program in spirituality and health at the National Institute for Healthcare Research. Funding by the John Templeton Foundation — an organization that makes grants to research projects — has given medical schools the opportunity to develop a spirituality curriculum of their own. Click here to read this entire article.
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