As a medical student, Dr. Julie Oyler was told to remove the cross she wore on the lapel of her white coat. As a resident, Dr. Aasim Padela was told he wouldn’t have time to recite Islam’s five daily prayers. But ignoring God was not an option for Oyler, an evangelical Christian, or Padela, a Muslim. Nor should it be, according to researchers at the University of Chicago, where both doctors now freely practice their medical specialties and religious traditions.

After discovering that silence on matters of spirituality left some patients unsatisfied with the care they received at the University of Chicago, two doctors there and four faculty scholars chose to examine how some medical schools either encourage or discourage physicians to integrate their faiths in conversations with patients and their own professional lives. Doctors who set their faith aside, they say, can become disillusioned and less effective.

“When doctors are dispirited, the care they give to patients is worse,” said Dr. Farr Curlin, co-director of the Program on Medicine and Religion. “Patients should be very hopeful that their doctor sees their work as a remarkable privilege, even a holy privilege, that will make the doctor respond to that patient out of joy.”

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-medicine-spirituality-20120402,0,3166577.story