Family medicine faculty receive $15,000 spirituality and medicine grant

John Testerman, MD, PhD, associate professor and chair, department of family medicine, and Ann Ronan, MA, instructor in family medicine, recently won a $15,000 spirituality and medicine award. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation and distributed by the National Institute for Healthcare Research (NIHR), the awards recognize model programs in spirituality and health at medical schools throughout the nation. These awards from NIHR underscore the growing importance that medical schools and residency programs are placing on responding sensitively to patients' spiritual needs. This highly successful awards program has helped to change the face of medical education in the United States. When the award program began in 1995, only three of 125 undergraduate medical schools offered courses on how to deal sensitively and effectively with patients' spiritual issues. Today, thanks in large part to this successful program, half of all undergraduate medical schools offer courses in this important area. The Loma Linda program will use the funds to teach family practice residents to effectively include spiritual assessment as part of a routine history, recognize the effects of culture and religion on health-care choices, and explore their own belief systems and spiritual practices and understand how these might affect care of patients.

[Scope, Autumn 2000]

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